[NFBCS] Portable JAWS

[Ed Barnes]

Hello Nicole and list.
The short answer is that yes, in the past, the very distant past, this
was possible to do, however, to be honest, as someone who works as a
computer support specialist so I probably login to 6 or 10 different
machines on a daily basis, so relied upon it heavily when it was
maintained, it wasn't a great implementation of portable software
because making it work was filled with caveots which were not
reasonable for most people outside of the css wrelm where most
css/computer support staff have local admin rights to most
desktops/laptops in their domain.
When I use the word domain I'm not simply referring to an active
directory domain but rather I'm using the term domain to refer to that
person's area of responsibility.
I think the portable versions of jaws and zoomtext stopped being
maintained at version 15 for jfw, in fact, I can no longer find any
references to the portable versions of jaws on the fs/vfo web site.
As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if these were ever maintained by
FS/VFO or if they were simply placed their back in the day as a
convenience to FS/VFO customers.
Please note, I didn't search for anything zoomtext/magic related
because I am not a zoomtext/magic user and I seem to recall that
you're not either. :)
Also, for the portable jfw to work "back in the day" you had to have
local admin rights on the laptop where you were using it because you
had to first install an an FS Video Intercept and do a reboot before
you could run portable jfw from your flash drive so getting it to work
was a pain in the neck on a good day. :(
To be honest, depending upon what you are actually trying to do, you
would probably have better success using the portable version of NVDA,
this can run from a flash drive, a temporary folder created on the pc
from where you wish to run it in user space, or you can put it on a
network share and run it from any pc on that network.
If you need speech to navigate the login screen and to allow you to
get to start/run to invoke your portable copy of nvda you can simply
use the narrator built into windows xp/7/8/10/11 to login and then
navigate to start/run to type the path to nvda.exe to start your
portable nvda.
Also, portable nvda does not require that you install anything on the
pc where you want to run it so you can simply walk up to any pc and
run it from your flash drive, a folder in user space, or an accessible
network share.
It even works in an rdp session if you rdp to another
laptop/desktop/server and then try to run your copy from a network
share or a folder on the box that you did rdp too.
I use portable NVDA every day even though I'm also a jfw user.
Fyi, I haven't tested this portable nvda in citrix, I use a jaws
license with the remote access and citrix add-on for that purpose.
I'm happy to communicate off list via phone/email/facetime/etc if I
can help further and I have no issue sharing contact details with you
or anyone else I can help regarding this topic, if you want to do
that, please email me off list at edbarnes7 at gmail.com or my work email
is edbarnes at gov.nl.ca
Good luck and happy Monday!
Regards, Ed



On 11/19/23, Nicole Torcolini via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:


>             In the past, I think that it was possible to put a file on a
> USB
> drive that would JAWS on whatever computer connected to the USB drive. Does
> anyone know if this is still possible?
>
>
>
> Nicole
>
>