[nfbcs] Practical Tips for Improving a Blind Person's Productivity on Computers

[Louis Maher]

Hello,

During the summer NFB national convention in Orlando Florida, the NFB in
Computer Science will hold a meeting.  In this meeting, we will have about a
30 minute discussion on "Practical Tips for Improving a Blind Person's
Productivity on Computers".  I have attached an initial list of these tips.
I would invite others to add their own tips to this list.  Better yet,
others could present their tips in person during the meeting, and receive
their own one-minute of fame.  

I have separated this list into Windows, iOS, and Linux.  Please send me
your suggestions.  We are looking for an appropriate web location to display
this list.   

I have also pasted the current list after my signature.  

Thanks for your consideration.



Regards
Louis Maher
Phone 713-444-7838
E-mail ljmaher at swbell.net
---- 
Practical Tips for Improving a Blind Person's Productivity on Computers 
---- 
Windows Computers

Place a shortcut to the favorites on your desktop.  
Go to C:\Users\userID\Favorites, click the right mouse button, and select
send to, and select desktop.  You can then access your favorites with
Windows Explorer.


If you have a Braille display, Control+alt+tab allows you to feel and hear
the window you are on.  Good for selecting another Window in high noise
environments.
  
If you are using JAWS, JAWS key + f10 shows all your sessions in alphabetic
order.  To go to a session, arrow down to your choice, and hit enter.


To save attachments in an Outlook message: arrow up to the top line in the
body of the text message, shift + tab to the attachment box, hit control + a
to select all the attachments, hit control + c to copy all the attachments
into the clipboard, in Windows Explorer, move to wherever you want the files
to be stored, and hit control + v.

If you have a file, and you want to Copy its path into the clipboard, select
the file in Windows Explorer, hit shift + applications, and hit the "copy as
path" option.

For adobe, when controls disappear, you can still use the keystrokes like
control+shift+s for save as, and control+p for print.  

To reliably start the Surface Pro Two with Windows 8.1: push the power
button for half a second, count to fifteen seconds, hit windows + enter to
bring up narrator, hit tab to get to the password field, fill in the
password and hit enter.  I have JAWS set to load automatically after the
login process.  JAWS does not come up for me reliably in the login dialog.
Windows + enter starts and stops Narrator.  Narrator is much improved in
Windows 8.  Start the surface Pro Two with narrator.

To put the Surface Pro Two to sleep, exit JAWS, start Narrator (windows +
enter), go to the desktop (windows + m), alt + f4, and pick the sleep
option.  Use Narrator for the wake-up process.  

Map a SharePoint Website to a Disk Drive 

To establish a link to a SharePoint site through Windows Explorer, go to the
SharePoint website, hit alt+d for the address field, starting from the end
of the address, delete all  of the address until you get to the website just
above the SharePoint site in question, hit  enter which opens the website
containing a link to your SharePoint page, tab down until you  are on your
SharePoint link, click the right mouse button (which is the context menu),
hit  the copy shortcut option, hit Windows + e to go to Windows Explorer,
hit shift + tab to  bring you to the left side of the screen (in tree view)
and land on computer (which is my  PC in Windows 8), click the right mouse
button, arrow down to Map Network drive, hit enter,  paste the SharePoint
shortcut name into the folder field, hit shift + tab and select a  drive,
tab to "reconnect at startup and check it, tab to finish.  

Now when you want to read or add documents to your SharePoint site, hit
Windows + e for  Windows Explorer, hit shift + tab to go to the tree view,
arrow down to the appropriate  disk drive, and your SharePoint documentation
will appear in a Windows Explorer dialog.  You can open, copy, and delete
files just like any Windows Explorer dialog.
---- 
iOS Machines

Read Anna Dresner's book, "Getting Started with the iPhone and iOS 7, An
Introduction for Blind Users" from the National Braille Press (npb.org) as
an introduction to the iPhone.

For the focus 14: chord k turns keyboard help on, chord b turns help off.
This 14 cell Braille display works well with the iPhone.

----- 
Linux Machines




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