[Trainer-Talk] Odd JAWS Issue When Navigating by Characters in a Word 365 Document

[David Goldfield]

I posted the following message in the main JFW users' list. I have decided to repost it here as some of you may possibly have encountered this problem with either yourselves or with students with whom you've worked. Here is the message.


Hello.

I am recently encountering a perplexing problem which I am noticing on two different computers.

Both machines are running Windows 10, build 1903, with the latest set of updates for both Windows as well as Office 365.

When I navigate in a Word 365 document using left arrow or right arrow to move character by character I often hear silence instead of the character next to the caret. As an example, if I type

Now is the time for all good men

and begin navigating with right arrow from the beginning of the line I might hear the O in "now" but when I move to the W the character does not speak. It doesn't say "space" or something else, it is just silent. Yet when I press numpad-5 to read the current character it usually will speak the character.

Enhanced editing support is definitely enabled in the JAWS settings for Word. I wondered if this was a cursor blink rate issue. I notice that the JAWS cursor blink rate setting is set to 53, which it claims is the fastest setting. Concurrently, the cursor blink rate in my Keyboard settings in Control Panel is set for 100 and, no matter what I try to change it to, it always goes back to 100 once I select OK. It seems that the JAWS cursor blink rate setting is forcing the Windows cursor blink rate setting to conform to what JAWS wants, which I found absolutely mind-blowing. I first discovered this in Chrome when I was receiving inaccurate results when moving the cursor on a Web page I use at work but most other Web pages speak normally when moving the cursor. This all started today and I am at a total loss as to what is happening. I am open to ideas and suggestions from others who may have a clue as to what's going on as I clearly do not. I would really prefer to not have to do a JAWS repair but if doing so will absolutely fix the problem then I will do it.


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David Goldfield, Assistive Technology Specialist JAWS Certified: 2019 WWW.David-Goldfield.Com<http://WWW.David-Goldfield.Com>