Your Braille Display Your Braille Display: Assuming you have a Braille display connected, and you configured Window Eyes to use it, either during the install or after the install, you will notice that it is always displaying information that is relevant to what is going on. For example, as you move around in Windows, or within your application, the display will basically follow important information. The display is not simply showing exactly what your synthesizer is speaking. it is much more intelligent than that. If you do not have a Braille display, or do not wish to use it with Window Eyes, feel free to skip this section. As you tab around, the information being displayed can be broken down into three different components. You have control type, field name, and field data. The control type is the type of control you are on, like checkboxes, radio buttons, edit boxes, etc. The field name is the label associated to the control, like first name, age, phone number, etc. The field data is the actual information in the control, like your actual name, your actual age, or your phone number. By default the display will show the control type you are in, then a blank cell, then the field name, followed by a blank cell, and finally the field data. This is all subject to change depending on your specific likes and wants. Window Eyes supports a wide range of Braille displays. Each display is different in how many cells it supports, if it has routing keys, double routing keys, and the number of buttons, and their placement on the display. Window Eyes has default functions for each display. Braille keys will allow you to scroll the display left and right, or up and down from what you are currently looking at. You can get detailed attribute information or spacing information or track the mouse. There is a tremendous amount of flexibility in what you want the Braille keys to do, and as you’ll find out later in this tutorial, it is very easy to configure the display to your exact wants and needs. If your Braille display supports routing keys, you can typically use them to issue a click at the position by default. If you place the mouse on a line in your application that is constantly changing, giving the visual user an up-to-date account of what is happening, you can have the display update with this information as well. By default, a feature known as quick message mode is enabled. Quick message mode is a feature that will display information that is typically not displayed on the screen but is voiced. For example, when you press then num lock or the caps lock keys, Window Eyes will speak the current state, like “cap on, cap off.” There are many more examples like this, where something is spoken but nothing is displayed on the screen rendering that speech. But in these cases, whatever was being shown on the display will be replaced with this quick message. After the default of two seconds, the display will go back to what was there before the quick message. This is a great way to get the quick speech message without disturbing your normal work. Let’s take a quick detour to see how you can determine what keystrokes have been defined for your current Braille display. Currently, as you remember when I installed Window Eyes, there was no display. I selected “none” as my display type. What I’m going to do now is I’m going to switch the Braille display to a Braille display that I have connected. I happen to be using the HandyTech Modular 64 display. It’s a 64-cell display from HandyTech. We are going to go ahead and select this Braille display and show you how the keystrokes that are set up for it which were set up by HandyTech and how you can actually interact with it a little bit. I’m not going to go into great details of the display itself, but just show you how you can go into your Braille display and see how it actually works. I’m still sitting at the desktop with Window Eyes running, so I’m going to bring Window Eyes to the foreground by pressing control-backslash. WE: Window Eyes There is Window Eyes, it pronounces itself when it comes up. I’m going to go back into the file menu. This is the only menu that we’ve been looking at so far. So I’m going to do my alt-f for file, holding down the alt key and tapping the f key. WE: File, save s pull down I’m just going to go ahead and down arrow a couple times. WE: Manage sets and scripts, m pull down. That is the first one. Down again WE: Select synthesizer, y dialog That is where you could change your synthesizer if you want to. Down arrow again. WE: Select Braille display, b dialog Select Braille display, that is what we want to do, so I’m going to hit enter on that. Notice that it said “Select Braille display dialog.” Visually, I see “Select Braille Display…” on the menu. That indicates to me, as a sighted user, that this will actually launch a new dialog. A dialog will come up, versus just changing an option on or off or something like that. And that’s why Window Eyes says, “dialog” when you do that. So I’m going to hit enter on this. WE: Menu closed. Braille displays, B. none. List box, 1 of 56. Dialog, select Braille display. Ok, so here we have the select Braille display dialog. This is very similar to the dialog that came up when we installed Window Eyes. It gives me a list box of all of the Braille displays that are available, from none, which is currently selected, to all of the other ones that are out there. And I’m still sitting on the none, so I’m in this list box and down arrow one time. WE: Alva 240, 2 of 56 Remember, these are sorted alphabetically and this is the first one that was there during the installation, when we did that as well. But I don’t want to have to down arrow several times because there are several Braille displays here. I just want to type in an “H” for the first display that starts with “h.” So let me hit one “h.” WE: h, Handytech Bookworm, 30 of 56 Not what I want, so I’m going to keep tapping “h” until I hear what I want. Next one WE: H, HandyTech BrailleStar40 WE: H, HandyTech BrailleStar80 WE: H, HandyTech BrailleWave WE: H, HandyTech EasyBraille WE: H, HandyTech Modular40/80 WE: H, HandyTech Evolution 64/88 There we go. HandyTech Evolution 64/88. I have the 64 version right here. Now all of the HandyTech displays will auto-detect their displays. All you have to do is tell it which display you are interested in using and it will go off and find that display. So if I tab from here, I’m going to go to the “ports” list box. WE: Ports, p. Column 1, list box, 1 of 55 In this case, I don’t need to select the “com port.” I’ll leave it set for whatever it is. If you feel comfortable and know where you have it hooked up, you can go to USB, but HandyTech is going to ignore this setting because they are aut-detecting what is going on. So I don’t care what the port is in my case. I’m going to hit tab again. WE: Command line, start up help, modevol, read only, edit box This is a read only edit box that gives you a command line parameter that if you start up Window Eyes from the command line and you give you a “slash” whatever it says here, it will automatically start up Window Eyes with this display. Now once I select this display Window Eyes will come up with this display automatically, anyway. But let’s say I wanted to have it to come up with something different than what my default is, I could do that. This is more of an advanced option, so I’m going to go ahead and skip that, but this is where you could get what the command line is for your individual synthesizer that you have selected in this list box. So I’m going to tab again. WE: OK, button. And now I hit enter on ok. WE: Window Eyes Now, verbally you are not going to notice anything different. But my display is now taken off. It is hard to show a display on a verbal tutorial here. So you are going to have to take my word for it. The Braille display is now showing in my case Window Eyes display. And because that is the option that we just heard and that is the window that currently has focus. Now if I were to go through menus or buttons, I could tell that it is a button. I could tell that it is a checkbox and whether is it checked or not. Of course, I can get exact spellings and spacings and things like that where speech falls a little bit short. It is more difficult if you have, say two spaces on a line, where with speech, you can turn it on so you hear all spaces, but that gets a little bit annoying and it is hard to catch those, where with Braille, you can catch it much quicker. Or lets say that you’ve got the case of a letter wrong, where speech would run right over that typically, the Braille would catch those things. So Braille certainly has its advantages and things like that and is able to deal with that. But I’m not going to get into the philosophies of why Braille is good or bad. I just wanted to show how you can actually connect to it and in this case, now that we’ve selected the HandyTech Evolution, I want to show you how to find out what the keys are that are available. Window Eyes gives you great flexibility in being able to customize the display and how you want it. If you don’t like the way that our default keys are set up, you can easily change them. You can make keys do different functionality, reverse keys around, change whatever you want. But obviously we’ve given you some good defaults. Now my Window Eyes control panel is still up. And I’m going to do instead of alt-f for the file menu, I’m going to hit alt-b, as in Braille, to go into the Braille menu. So I’m going to hold down alt and press b. WE: B, Braille B pull down, hotkeys, h dialog The first menu option is hotkeys. This is the one that I want to go into. And this is a dialog, so we know that it will open up a new window, a dialog window. So I’m going to hit enter on this. WE: Menu closed, Keys all applications, s, triple action down scroll Braille right, list box, 1 of 62, dialog So there are 62 keys set up by default. Again, you can change these. This list box said keys all applications, which means these keys are basically global keys no matter where I’m at in my Windows sessions or application. It doesn’t matter. These keys are available to me from the Braille display. So if I take my hand off of the physical keyboard, bring it onto the Braille display, these keys will do what I want at any point. Now I can make Braille keys active to a specific application. So let’s say that I’m inside Notepad and I’d rather my keys be Notepad specific, I can do that. So I can have global keys and I can application specific keys. Typically you are going to use global keys and I’m not going to talk about application keys. But it is a very powerful feature that allows you to set up very specific keystrokes that may be more important in certain applications than they are in others. Application keys take precedence over global keys. This list box will go through and display each of those. Again we heard the first one, saying triple action down scroll Braille right. Now if I hit the triple action down key, then it will scroll the Braille right. That’s what that key will do on my Braille display. And if I down arrow again, WE: triple action left center shift tab, 2 of 62 So triple action left center will do a shift tab. Now these are keys on my Braille display and this is just telling me what will happen when I press these keystrokes. And if I down arrow again. WE: triple action left center triple action right center enter, 3 of 62 So, by hitting triple action left center and triple action right center together, it will basically press enter for me. So these Braille keys are very powerful. They can do Window Eyes commands, they can do any combination, any number of Window Eyes commands, or they can just send keystrokes. I can define a Braille key to say “Sincerely, enter enter enter, Douglas Geoffray.” If I chose to do that, and if I do that a lot, I can hit one Braille key and boom, it will happen. Not very Braille specific, but a good example of how powerful these Braille keys actually are. And you can continue on down through this list and look for your Braille display to see how your Braille keys are defined. We used to list these keys in the manual to where all of the Braille manufacturers had their factory keys. The problem is that these keys are changing a lot. The Braille display manufacturers are changing them, we are getting customer feedback, so the manual is very outdated. So we decided not to put the factory settings of the Braille keys in the manual, but give you this very simple dialog that you can go to just to find out what those keys are defined as. While we’re in this dialog, I’m going to tab around again just to show you some of the functionality here. I’m not going to go into great detail of this, but I want to show you what I can do inside this Braille hot key dialog. I’m going to tab one time… WE: Capture Braille key, c button This is a button that when I hit enter on this, it will basically allow me to hit any key combination on my Braille display that is physically supported by my Braille display. Window Eyes will capture that combination. I can press a single key, or assuming that my Braille display will support a combination of keys, I can press as many as I’d like. Window Eyes will capture those keys and the reason that we want to capture them is because we want to define those keys to do a functionality, or maybe we just want to quickly find out what that key is already defined as. So if I were to press one of these keys that we’ve already heard, like triple action down, which was the first option, if I were to capture that key now, with a key already defined, and take me to that option in the list box. And then I can find out just exactly what that item does. Or if it is not defined, it will create that entry in my list box and then I can actually assign functionality to that key press. So I’m going to hit tab to go off of this to go to the next control. WE: key function f, enter combo box 1 of 1 So these are key functions of this particular key. It’s a combo box that would allow you to show item by item what this particular function does. And in this case it only does one function, so it had only one entry, and it’s the enter. Which means that this combination, remember I stayed on the triple action right center, and this produces an enter key. So this is a way that I can go through them individually through this combo box to see what each one does. If I tab again, WE: add hotkey h, dialog Let’s say that I wanted to add a hotkey to this. First, the enter key is the first command here. If I were to add a hotkey like, read title bar, read status, or route mouse to top of window, it would just do that. I could continue to add hotkey after hotkey and so on. There is no limit to the number of hotkeys that you can add and define and it would just keep adding on to the end of that. That’s how I can make functionality into my Braille keys. So in my case I’m on a key that is already defined, I could have probably just defined a brand new key and set it up the way that I wanted. Tab again. WE: Add keystroke, k button Here is where I can add a keystroke. If I hit enter on this, it will say press keystroke. And here I would go back to my real keyboard and press a key combination and Window Eyes would capture that key and say, control-alt-F12, and that’s what this Braille key is going to produce when that Braille key is pressed. Whatever key combination you want. And again, I could add any amount of keystrokes that I wanted. Tab again. WE: Add custom keystroke, u dialog Add custom keystroke is another way of adding keystrokes, but unfortunately, the operating system eats certain key presses, for instance, if I just wanted to send the Windows key, which typically brings up the start menu, the operating system eats that keystroke and Window Eyes really doesn’t see it by itself and pops up the start menu. Well, if we go into the add custom keystroke dialog, there are checkboxes for all of the modifiers, like control and shift and alt-insert and windows key, etc. I could just check one of those boxes and say that I just want to send out that modifier. Or I want to send that modifier with “w.” That is just a more advanced way of being able to set up the specific keystrokes if I can’t actually type them from the keyboard without the operating system doing something with those key presses. Tab again. WE: Clear entry, e button Clear entry will actually just clear the entry that is selected in the combo box. So let’s say that I’ve set up 20 different commands that I want this particular Braille key to do, but I saw that the first one isn’t right, so I can just select it in the combo box and hit clear entry, and it will go away. Tab again. WE: clear key, l button Clear key will actually take all of the functionality that you have defined for this Braille key and clears them all out. So if you had 20 functions and key press combinations, this would clear it out and let you start from scratch. Tab again. WE: Delete key, d button Delete key allows me to delete this key combination. So if I don’t want this Braille combination to do anything, I can just hit enter here and it will delete this combination from the list box. Tab again. WE: keys applied to, all applications, a, radio button, 1 of 2 This is the radio button that allows me to decide whether the keys that I’m defining are application specific or global. All applications is global, the other option is for the current application. The current application is the one that you were using when you popped up the Window Eyes control panel. Tab again. WE: OK, button I’m on the ok button. Hitting enter would save everything that you have done so far. Tab again WE: Cancel, button Cancel would abort everything. So if I deleted keys, or added keys or whatever, and I hit enter on cancel, then all of those changes would be lost. So, anything that you do, if you choose cancel, it will be lost. If you want to save it, you must hit enter on ok. Since I didn’t really do anything with this, I’m going to ahead and hit “escape” to get out of this. While we are I’m just going to quickly go through some of the other Braille options, hitting alt-b again to get to the Braille pull down menu WE: hotkeys, h dialog This was the hotkeys dialog, but I’m going to down arrow to the next option. WE: Options, o dialog Options dialog. Let me hit enter here. WE: Menu closed. Grade 2, enabled. B checkbox, unchecked, dialog. Braille options This is Braille options that allows you to set up a lot of the Braille functionality for a beginning user. Remember we also have advanced users and intermediate users. The first option is Grade 2, enabled and it said unchecked. What this is saying Grade 2 is not enabled because this isn’t checked. If you want Grade 2 enabled, hit the spacebar. WE: Space, checked. Enabled. B checkbox. So now Grade 2 is enabled. If I hit space again, WE: Space, unchecked. Enabled B checkbox Now if I tab to the next option. WE: Grade 2, auto untranslated cursor, c checkbox, unchecked Auto-untranslated cursor is an option that means if you do have Grade 2 enabled and the cursor is sitting on a word, it will automatically untranslate that particular word with the cursor in it. So if you have a line and you are reading through it, the nice thing about this is that you see each character on your Braille display as your cursor moves to it. If you have this unchecked, which it is by default, then the word will remain Grade 2 throughout your entire line, regardless if the cursor is moving on it. Tab again. WE: Grade 2, translate symbols, t checkbox, unchecked The translator used for English is Duxbury’s Grade 2 translator. They have an option that says something like, “Should you translate the symbols (which typically aren’t Grade 2 symbols) into characters on your Braille display or should you spell it out?” For instance, should you say “at” sign or should you say dollar sign? Or should you actually translate them into a Braille symbol on there? Tab again. WE: 8-dot Braille, d checkbox, unchecked Should you be using 8-dot Braille or 6-dot Braille? If you have it unchecked, then you are using 6-dot Braille. If you are using Grade 2 Braille, it automatically switches you to 6-dot Braille. You cannot select 8-dot Braille while you are using Grade 2 Braille. But for people that prefer to not use Grade 2, but like 8-dot Braille, then you can use this. I should mention that we are using Unicode here, so Braille will display all of the keys, all of the Unicode keys, which are all of the characters that are out there. There are tables that allow you to define what these keys display. That is a more advanced option, so we will not get into that now. Tab again. WE: Auto update timeout, u, 500 edit box Auto-update timeout allows me to set the amount of time Window Eyes will automatically display the text under the mouse pointer on the Braille display. Remember we talked about if the mouse is sitting on a line, it is constantly updating. Maybe it is 5 percent done, 10 percent done, and so on. If we put the mouse on that line, the Braille display will automatically go off every 500 milliseconds, which is every half of a second. There are 1000 milliseconds in a second. Twice a second it will go out there and get the new line under the mouse and display it on the Braille display. So you can speed this up or slow this down, based on the amount of milliseconds there. Tab again. WE: Quick message mode, on with timeout, radio button checked, 3 of 3 Quick message mode, there are three radio buttons here. It says “disabled.” Remember, quick message mode is, my Braille display is showing the line under the cursor, and lets say some tooltips pop up and gives me some information that Window Eyes automatically read. That would be a quick message. We don’t want to take you away from the line that you are currently displaying, but we also don’t want you to miss these tooltips. Now speech will just speak it right out, it’s not a big deal. But with Braille, what do you do? We have this quick message mode that will momentarily take away what you were looking at, put in this quick message, and depending on the amount of seconds that you want it up there, it will stay up there for two seconds and then go back to what was there. Now if you start arrowing, or you change focus, then we immediately take it away as well. But you can also disable the quick message mode completely. You can turn it on to where there is no timeout, which means it will stay there until you do arrow around or change focus. The default is on with timeout, so after two seconds it will return to what was previously there. Tab again. WE: Timeout seconds, 2 edit box Because I have it on with timeouts, it took me to an edit box where the length of time was. Two seconds is the default. Tab again. WE: Attribute marking, enabled, checkbox checked So attribute markings, do you want to see highlighted, bold, underlined, italics, strikeout, or any of these types of attributes? If you don’t want to see any of these, you can uncheck this checkbox and we won’t show you the attributes. Now if you come across a character that is bolded, then it will automatically put up dots 7 and 8, even if you are in 6-dot Braille. We have this enabled by default. Tab again. WE: Attribute marking, highlight, radio button checked, 1 of 6 So there are 6 radio buttons here, and highlight is the one that is checked. So that means only dots 7 and 8 will come up if the text is highlighted. It will ignore all of the other attributes. Now I can arrow through all of these things, where I can choose bold, underline, italics, etc. You can also choose all of them as well. If you do not want to see any, uncheck the enable checkbox at the top. Tab again. WE: Spacing, show indents checkbox unchecked So, the next couple of controls have to do with spacing. Typically on a Braille display, you want to compact it down because your Braille is very expensive to begin with and you don’t want to waste a lot of your Braille display with empty spaces and things like that. We typically try to collapse the line down and don’t show you the indentions on the left, and we try to collapse the spacing. This helps you get the most out of your Braille. But if you are interested in formatting and you do want to know what is going on, this “show indents” will let you see how many spaces there are to the left of your line. If you were to hit space here, then it would start showing you the indentations of each line. Tab again. WE: Spacing, collapse extra spacing, radio button checked, 1 of 2 Collapse extra spacing, if there are spaces in your line, we will not collapse them. But if there are gaps in your line, like having text on the left, then a big gap on your screen, and more text to the right, then we will get rid of that gap. Not spaces, it is just a gap. That gap will be represented by one space on the Braille display. There is another option called show extra spacing, the second radio button. If I select that, then it will show you that gap, and it will measure the distance between the text on the left and the text on the right, and convert it to pixels. Every 5 pixels on the screen is equal to one Braille cell on your Braille display. This factor may be changed if you want to change it. Tab again. WE: OK button This takes me to the ok button. So it takes me all the way around. These are all of the options in the Braille dialog. Let me escape out of that now. If any changes were made, then you would have to hit enter on ok, to make the changes permanent. I’m going to go ahead and hit escape now. WE: Window Eyes I’m going to hit alt-b again to bring up the Braille menu WE: B, Braille B pulldown, hotkeys h dialog I’m going to down arrow to the next one. WE: Options, o dialog That is what we just talked about. Down arrow again. WE: Apply Braille settings to all programs The settings that we did up there are actually set file specific. A set file is typically defined for an application. So let’s say that I’m in Notepad, and I’ve turned on Grade 2 Braille. Grade 2 Braille will work great in Notepad, but then let’s say that you start up Word, you will find that your Grade 2 has just turned off on you. That is because these options are set file specific. This is actually a good thing, because let’s say that inside word you probably want Grade 2 and maybe in Excel you don’t. You can adjust that the way that you want. If you do want your setting to be global, go down to supply Braille settings to all programs, and hit enter. This will then take my current settings and apply them to all of the set files that I have on my disk. This makes a great way to make globally all of the Braille changes. That is an important thing to remember. If you do want your changes to be stored throughout all of your applications, use this option. The hotkeys are already global and do not need to be changed. Arrow down to the last option. WE: Braille window, B We have a visual window, that is currently off, if it was turned on, would display on the top of the screen, everything that was on the Braille display. This is useful if you are working with sighted individuals. You can turn this on and off by pressing enter on this option. There are more Braille menu options, but you would have to switch it to either intermediate or advanced level. This will be discussed in a later section. There is a great deal of power with your Braille display. Later on, these details will be discussed more. Consult section 18 of the Window Eyes manual to see all of the features. Also, look at your list of Braille hotkeys to help you use your Braille display. That concludes this section, and I hope that you are more comfortable using your Braille display now.