[nfbcs] Windows Mouse cursor question

[Deborah Armstrong]

This has been my experience too. I hadn't used XP for a while and was on vacation for a month. So I booted up my sighted husband's old XP computer and installed JAWS and WindowEyes on it; it already had NVDA. I updated them all to the last version that supported XP and tried some experiments.

Sure enough in most situations, if I got a message box with an OK button, I could use the invisible cursor or the other screen reader equivalents to read the message in the box. And NVDA often automatically read it anyway.

But in Windows 7, most of the time, if such a message appears, I hear the OK button read and I can't access the actual message in the box. Nvda is best at automatically voicing that message, but with JAWS I often cannot access it at all. 

I remember in an old Freedom Scientific webinar archive, when Win 7 first came out there was a brief discussion of how Windows itself had now limited a program's ability to manipulate the mouse. But it was a very brief discussion and I haven't been able to locate the comment. I wanted some confirmation that this was a Microsoft issue so I could direct complaints to them.

I also work with sighted Dragon users, and Dragon can move the mouse fine in later versions of Windows. It has a visual concept called the mouse grid, where a numbered onscreen grid lets the user verbally direct the mouse to a particular area. So to me that seems to prove that programs can still move the mouse freely onscreen.

There's a wonderful early science fiction story, written by E.M. Forester in 1909 called "The Machine Stops" -- you can find it online if you google. In that story, the comfy world people live in begins to deteriorate very slowly, so slowly that at first they do not notice. I feel sometimes that our access to Windows is drifting so slowly in that direction we hardly notice!

--Debee


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of David Andrews via nfbcs
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2016 8:05 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: David Andrews
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Windows Mouse cursor question

I suspect part of what you are seeing is the result of multiple windows on screen and more complex displays. I don't know though why things don't always match.  I can be in a program, that is functioning normally, and I want to review something, for some reason, so use PC or invisible cursor, and what I get is not what I just heard from program, the display seems to be elsewhere.  I don't know why.

Dave

At 06:05 PM 9/13/2016, you wrote:
>I've been using screen readers since the 1980s, and Windows 7 is the 
>first time I've actually struggled with this issue. I realized this 
>list was the perfect place to ask.
>
>It appears that the so-called "mouse cursor" (what JFW calls the 
>JAWS cursor) can no longer freely roam the screen. At first I 
>thought this was indeed just an issue with JFW, but in experimenting 
>with NVDA and with WindowEyes I see the same behavior.
>
>I can run an application in Windows XP and explore the entire screen 
>or active window, depending on whether I restricted the cursor, and 
>pretty much review everything text-based that is there.
>
>But in Windows 7 (and presumably 8 and 10 as well) half the time 
>what I receive by exploring the screen with a mouse cursor is a 
>jumble. And from that jumble text is missing that the screen reader 
>just finished speaking.
>
>This happens on all my machines, in areas where there is no 
>insertion point, or real cursor. I can run the same software and get 
>two different results between XP and 7, even with NVDA's screen review feature.
>
>The most dramatic example of this is in Outlook, where in XP I can 
>examine a message's fields, To, From, date, subject, etc. all using 
>the invisible, JAWS, mouse or review cursor.
>
>Reviewing the same message in the same version of outlook in Windows 
>7, only parts of those fields appear to the mouse cursor.
>
>In a window with multiple panes I could usually get to a pane that 
>didn't receive focus to read information there. Now it's hit or 
>miss; sometimes I can read the info, sometimes the screen reader 
>voices it automatically but I never locate it when I review, and 
>sometimes it's easy to review.
>
>As an advanced user, I always made extensive use of the review 
>capabilities of my screen reader, and I wish I knew what was going 
>on here and why I apparently can no longer read everything onscreen. 
>I'd really like a technical explanation of what is happening and 
>what work-arounds people are finding?
>
>Thoughts?
>
>--Debee


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