[nfbcs] A useful trick

[Nicole B. Torcolini at Home]

Yes, that may well be the best option, but that is not always possible.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Doug Lee" <dgl at dlee.org>
To: "NFB in Computer Science Mailing List" <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 10:22 AM
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] A useful trick


>A thing to watch out for when using one screen reader to recover
> another:  Any time you shut a screen reader down, you stand a chance
> of inadvertently telling Windows that no screen reader is running
> anymore.  Example:  At least on XP, not sure about later Windows
> incarnations, if you start Narrator, then start or restart JAWS, and
> finally stop Narrator, I believe Windows "forgets" that JAWS is
> running.  Some applications, such as Skype, will then stop providing
> accessibility information in order to save system resources and
> improve performance.
>
> The airtight solution to all this is to restart your preferred screen
> reader when no other reader is still running.
>
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 12:00:51PM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
> Jim,
>
> In my experience it doesn't generally cause a problem to run two screen 
> readers, especially if you are running as one of them Narrator or NVDA 
> which are
> less invasive.  In fact, I have run narrator before to see what was going 
> on when I lost speach with Window-Eyes to see the error that was 
> generated.  I
> have even accidentally run both Window-Eyes and Narrator together and they 
> both worked fine, except of course that I had two different voices telling 
> me
> the same thing in slightly different ways.  Of course if one looses speech 
> because of a sound card issue, this won't work.  This was less possible 
> before the
> display chaining implementation that most screen readers use now with 
> their display drivers under Windows XP.  I don't think that NVDA or 
> Narrator use
> display or mirror drivers at all, though, which makes them good candidates 
> to get one out of a jam.  Obviously, if one can shut down and restart 
> their screen
> reader, that's going to be the best solution.  In my mind, though, 
> bringing up a second screen reader and thereby doing a normal shutdown is 
> a far better
> approach than forcing a shutdown.  There probably could be problems 
> running two screen readers before Windows XP, I'm not sure of that, and 
> there might
> also be a problem if both screen readers used the same synthesizer, so 
> there are probably cases when one could run into problems.  Still, it is a 
> strategy that
> works sometimes.
>
> On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 07:00:07 -0800, Jim Barbour wrote:
>
>>Hey Steve,
>
>>I suspect it causes much unhappiness if two screen readers
>>are running at the same time, so either way you'd need to make sure
>>that JAWS was shut down before trying to bring up either NVDA or
>>another JAWS session.
>
>>Take Care,
>
>>Jim
>
>>On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 08:46:47AM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
>>> The difference I see is that if you have lost speech on a screen reader 
>>> such as JFW, you don't know if it is still running or not.  The shortcut 
>>> key
> generally
>>> won't do a thing if JFW has gone silent but is still running.  I'm not 
>>> sure, though, if there is an advantage to this over putting NVDA on the 
>>> computer and
>>> assigning a shortcut to it.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Steve Jacobson
>>>
>>> On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:31:04 -0800, Jim Barbour wrote:
>>>
>>> >Hey Tracy,
>>>
>>> >How is this different than simply assigning a shortcut key to JAWS so
>>> >you can restart JAWS from the keyboard when it craps out?
>>>
>>> >Thanks,
>>>
>>> >Jim
>>>
>>> >On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 08:24:39AM -0500, Tracy Carcione wrote:
>>> >> Lately, Jaws has been getting stuck or shutting down unexpectedly, 
>>> >> leaving
>>> >> me with no idea what's happening.  But, following instructions on the 
>>> >> NVDA
>>> >> website, I put NVDA on a flash drive with autolauncher.  When Jaws 
>>> >> craps
>>> >> out, I plug in my NVDA drive, and in a few seconds I have speech 
>>> >> again and
>>> >> can figure out what the problem is.  I'm finding it very handy, and
>>> >> thought I'd share.
>>> >> Tracy
>
>
> -- 
> Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
> SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com 
> http://www.ssbbartgroup.com
> "It's not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few 
> accomplish
> it after the age of six." --John W. Gardner and Francesca Gardner Reese
>
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