[Trainer-Talk] Using virtual ribbon menus in JAWS

[Raul Gallegos]

I am personally not a fan of the virtual menus because I think that it ends 
up setting the user for failure in the future. If people will recall, many 
many years ago, Jaws had a special hotkey, insert with f6, to quickly take 
you to the desktop icon area. Of course, this was done to help people since 
Windows key with m or Windows key with d did not yet exist. However, 
because of this, when Freedom scientific removed that hotkey, it caused a 
big Ruckus because users were so used to doing it that way, they did not 
think that any other way would be valid. Therefore, using this example, 
along with several others, I always teach the real way of using a menu or a 
computer hotkey that belongs to the operating system or program before I 
will teach the screen reader way of doing the same thing. Yes, it might be 
easier today, yes, it might be more convenient today, but that could easily 
change and leave the user stranded. As to your question, I let my students 
know what the options are and I explained to them my reasoning for trying 
to learn the real way of accessing ribbons or other dialogues. In the end, 
if the student wants to learn the screen reader way, I will put the 
disclaimer out there that this may only work with that screen reader 
specifically and it may disappear. I hope this helps.


On July 22, 2021 9:51:55 PM Kelsey Nicolay via Trainer-Talk 
<trainer-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hello,
> I currently am running JAWS 2021 and find that I prefer to use the virtual 
> ribbon menus because I hate the ribbons in Microsoft Office. However, there 
> seems to be a lot of debate on this topic; some sources say it’s a matter 
> of personal preference while others don’t recommend it because it makes 
> things more difficult to find. I am curious to know what everyone’s 
> thoughts are on the virtual ribbon menus option in JAWS. Do you teach both 
> ways and let the student decide what works best or should virtual ribbon 
> menus not be used at all and instead learn to use the standard ribbons?
> Sent from Kelsey Nicolay’s iPhone
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