[gui-talk] Fwd: Jaws Info: Skim reading with Jaws

[Steve Pattison]

From: Daniel Keogh DKeogh at quantumtechnology.com.au
To: vip-l at softspeak.com.au

Skim Reading And Skim Reading With Summary

How many times have you received a manual for a device or software in
electronic form only to find that important passages or phrases are
marked with bold or italic text? Even worse you have a huge document
several hundred pages long you know has important information in it but
it has no table of contents. A sighted person would simply flick the
pages over or scroll the document down the screen until a phrase or text
colour or font caught their eye. They'd then stop and read to see if it
was what they were after. For a Braille user this is harder to do but
can be done with practice. But how do you do it with speech only?

In Jaws 6.0 a function called Skim Reading was introduced which allows
you to do exactly the kind of thing sighted people can do so easily. If
you're using Jaws version 6.0 I strongly suggest you update to 6.2 to
get the full functionality of this feature. Jaws 6.2 is a free update
for you and can be downloaded from

http://www.freedomscientific.com/dowunloads/jaws/JAWS-previous-downloads
.asp

Skim reading will work in any word processor. It will even work in Note
Pad or on a web page. To enter the Skim Reading dialog box press Control
+Shift +Jaws Key  +Down Arrow. The Jaws key is usually the Insert on the
number pad unless you have changed your keyboard layout. If you're using
the Laptop layout it's the Caps Lock.

The skim reading feature is very powerful but simple enough to operate.
When you first open the skim reading window you are on a series of 4
radio buttons. These switch between the various ways of reading. I will
discuss them briefly below. If you keep pressing the Tab key you will
cycle through 5 other options that appear regardless of the Skim Reading
method selected.

Skim Reading Indication

When checked, this will cause Jaws to produce a sound while searching
for text. This tells you that Jaws is still searching and is especially
useful in large documents if the occurrences of the text are few.

Start Skim Reading

Pressing space or enter on this button closes the Skim Reading dialog
box. Jaws will then start to read out any text matches it finds.
Pressing the control key will silence jaws and halt the Skim Reading
process.

Create Summary

This is probably the most useful way to Skim Read. This option will go
through the entire document and dump any results into a separate window.
Each result will be on it's own line and is a link. Pressing enter on
any of these links will drop you back onto the document at the exact
spot that text occurs.

Close

Pressing Space or Enter on this option will close the Skim Reading
dialog without any further action.

Help

This will bring up the Jaws Help with information on the Skim Reading
feature.

As stated above there are 4 ways you can Skim Read in a document using
Jaws. The first 2 really don't need any explanation:  Read First Line Of
Every Paragraph and Read First Sentence of Every Paragraph.

The next 2 do need some explanation:

Text Rules Apply For Reading

This option allows you to search for every occurrence of a string of
text in the document. Use the up and down arrow keys to select this
option from the radio buttons then press tab. The Rules history combo
box is extremely useful. Jaws actually remembers any rules you have
defined in the past. Use the arrows to select a rule if you wish to use
one of the ones you created earlier. Pressing Tab again gets you to the
edit box to type in the text you want to search for. Press tab again and
select either the line, sentence or paragraph depending on how you want
the results displayed. You can then tab to the Skim Read or Create
Summary buttons.

There are more advanced ways of searching for text which I won't go into
here. If you want more information on these you can download the Skim
Reading tutorial from the Freedom Scientific web site. Download links
are at the end of this FAQ.

Attribute and colour Rules Apply For Reading

This allows you to look for any text that has a particular colour or
attribute such as Bold, Italic etc. most of this should be fairly self
explanatory but More information can be found in the Skim Reading
tutorial.

There are 2 versions of the Skim Reading and Skim Reading With Summary
tutorial. The first is in Daisy format and the second is in plain MP3
format.

The direct download link for the Daisy book is:

ftp://ftp.freedomscientific.com/users/hj/private/WebFiles/daisy/XTraSkim
ReadingWithSummary.exe

The direct download for the MP3 book is:

ftp://ftp.freedomscientific.com/users/hj/private/WebFiles/JAWS/SkimReadi
ngWithSummary.zip

Regards,

Danny Keogh
Quantum Technology
Phone:  03 9545 4102
Mobile:  0439 022 146
Email  dkeogh at quantumtechnology.com.au
www.quantumtechnology.com.au

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
Windows Live Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963