Reading Information Relative to the Cursor Reading Information Relative to the Cursor: With Window Eyes, you can easily read information relative to your cursor or insertion pointer, if your application uses a cursor. Typically, applications with word processors or Notepad or WordPad, do have a cursor. Let’s go into WordPad, which is a basic word processor, offered free with your Windows operating system and see how this works. Since I am using Windows Vista, I’m just going to bring up the start menu by tapping the Windows key… WE: Start menu, start search… Let me type in “wordpad.” WE: WordPad, programs group, 1 of 1 So it found WordPad for me. I didn’t have to go through the “all programs.” I am going to hit enter now. WE: Document, WordPad, Rich text window, rich edit I’m inside WordPad with no document. I’m in the document area, and I could start typing if I choose to. But I’m going to bring in section 1 of the Window Eyes manual so that we can show you how to read relative to the cursor. I’m going to bring up the WordPad file menu by pressing alt-f. WE: F, file f pulldown And I’m going to hit “o” for open. WE: O, Menu closed. (silenced) This brought me to the “open” dialog. I could have pressed control-o to go directly to the open dialog. I’m going to type in the entire path that we learned earlier in Windows Explorer: c:/program files/gw micro/window-eyes/manual and hit enter. Now if you have auto complete on, suggestions will come up as you type in more letters. If you want to take a look at what is here, you need to back tab twice. So, go ahead and hit shift-tab twice. WE: No selected item, list view There are no items in this list view. The reason for this is, by default WordPad is looking for all files with a .rtf extension. Our manual files have an extension of .txt, so that is why there are no files listed. So I’m going to hit tab to go back to the edit box… WE: file name n, combo box I’m going to type in “*.*” That will show me every file in the manual directory. Now if I shift-tab twice… WE: Name: Appendix A, hotkeys reference guide, unselected… Let me down arrow multiple times until I get to section 1. WE: Section 1, Introducing Window Eyes. 9 of 33 Press enter. WE: Document WordPad, rich text window, 1, Introducing Window Eyes. This section of Window Eyes… And it is going to start reading this entire section to you. Now I have loaded section 1 of the Window Eyes manual inside of WordPad, and now if I arrow down…..the first one was a blank line, and if you remember we have blank lines turned off, so down arrow again. WE: This section of the Window Eyes manual provides you with the nuts and…. Down again WE: bolts of Window Eyes packaging. You will also learn how to contact… We are just reading the line as the cursor moves to the right. If you want to, you could tap the right arrow repeatedly and hear each character. Pressing the left arrow would read everything, only going from right to left. You can also read certain things without actually moving the cursor. Window Eyes gives you the ability to read the current character, word, line, sentence, paragraph, etc. relative to the cursor position. You can also read things like, “next to…” or “prior to…” but we are not going to get into that. What you can do is, on the numeric keypad, you can use the control key to read relative to the cursor. If you do not use the control key, then it will think that it is reading relative to the mouse. There is another section on how to read using the mouse pointer. Just think of the control key as “cursor.” On the numeric keypad, if you think of a big “+” with the 5 being the middle of it, the 8, 5, and 2 would be the vertical bar, and the 4, 5, and 6 would be the horizontal bar. Those five keys are the keys used to read relative to the cursor. Once you can remember that “+” things will make more sense. So I am sitting at the beginning of the word “bolts,” and if I want to read the current character underneath the cursor, I can just hold down the control key and tap the left-most key of the horizontal bar, which is the 4 key. Again, num lock needs to be off for this to work. Hold down the control key and tap the 4 key. WE: B It said “b.” If I hit that keystroke again, control-numpad 4 WE: bravo Bravo. Hit it again. WE: B So it just goes back and forth between saying the letter and giving the phonetic of that letter. So control-left arrow (num pad 4) will read the current character under the mouse cursor. If you want to read the current word, you do control-right arrow (num pad 6). So I’m sitting on “bolts,” so if I do a control-right arrow key on the numeric keypad. WE: bolts Hit it again. WE: b o l t s It spelled it out for me. Hit it again WE: bravo, Oscar, Louis, tango, sierra Hit it again. WE: bolts It just goes back to the first option. There are actually three rotors for this option. It goes between saying the word, spelling the word, and spelling the word phonetically. The next unit up would just be line. If you want to hear the current line of the cursor, you can just press control-5, which is the center of the “+.” Left arrow was character, right arrow was word, and in the middle of those is “line.” Press control-5. WE: bolts of the Window Eyes packaging. You will also learn how to contact There you go. If you want to read the current sentence, just press control-num pad down arrow (2). That will read the current sentence. Control-num pad down arrow will read the sentence, and control-num pad up arrow (8), will read the current paragraph. Now the way that Window Eyes determines what is a sentence and what is a paragraph, is maybe a little different than what you are used to. A sentence assumes that the terminating punctuation ends with two spaces. So you need to make sure that your text is written to follow it with two spaces. A paragraph just assumes that you have a blank line of text after it. Press control-num pad up arrow (8) WE: This section of the Window Eyes manual provides you with the nuts and bolts of the Window Eyes packaging. You will also learn how to contact our technical support department as well as how to set-up Windows to work the best with Window Eyes. And there you go. There is a lot more text, but that is the current paragraph. So we have talked about character, word, line, sentence, and paragraph. It is also convenient to sit back and listen to a document all the way from where you are down to the bottom or until you stop it. We call this our read-to-end feature. If I press control-shift-r, lets see what happens. WE: bolts of the Window Eyes packaging. You will also learn how to contact our technical support department as well as how to set-up Windows to work the best with Window Eyes. Section 1.1 Welcome to Window Eyes; Section 1.2 System Requirements; Section 1.3 Window Eyes Features; Section 1.4 I hit the escape key to stop that. This put the cursor directly on the last line that we heard. If we re-read that line, it is…. WE: Section 1.4 Packaging contents That is the line that it was reading when I hit the escape key. I could let the document read to the end and my screen would continue to scroll up as the text is being read. So it is a very nice way to just sit back and put your feet up, and just listen to a document. You can speed up the speech if you want to as well. There are some keys that you can press within read-to-end that enhance its’ functionality. Notice when I hit the escape key, any key except for a few special ones, will abort read-to-end. So if you just want to stop read-to-end, tap the control key, shift key, escape key, etc. It will just stop the read-to-end and put the cursor on the last line that it was reading, so you can pick up where you left off. Let me show you some other things that you can do with read-to-end. I’m going to press control-shift-r again to start it. WE: Section 1.4 Packaging contents…. So it started reading. I’m going to press the right arrow key one time. WE: Section 1.7… Again. WE: 1.1 Welcome to Window Eyes. Congratulations… Again. WE: Program which allows you access to… Again. WE: Applications… Again WE: displays. Window Eyes… Again WE: beginner to advanced. Let me hit left arrow now. WE: displays. Window Eyes. Again. WE: Applications… Left again. WE: program which allows…. Left again. WE: Congratulations on your purchase… Again. WE: Section 1.7 What was happening there was that when I hit the right arrow key, it caused Window Eyes to skip the current line, so wherever it was on the current line, it stopped, and it started reading the next line. So it is a quick way of fast-forwarding through a document if you just want to skip that line and go to the next line. When I hit the left arrow key, it actually took me back a line, so it was like it was rewinding the document. So you can use the right and left arrow keys to fast-forward and rewind through a document. Let me show you two more keys that you can press. I’m going to press control-shift-r again. WE: Congratulations on your purchase of Window Eyes…. Now I’m going to hit the “u” key. WE: Congratulations on your… And again. WE: Congratulations on your… Again (press “u” multiple times quickly) WE: Congratulations on your… This increased the rate of speech. Pressing “d” in the same manner will decrease the rate of speech. This is a quick way of modifying the rate of speech on-the-fly, rather than stopping the read-to-end and doing it that way. Go ahead and put your rate back to rate 35. Another command that might be useful while doing the read-to-end is routing the mouse pointer to the cursor. In another section, we will talk about how you can read relative to the mouse pointer. Sometimes it is just nice to synchronize and put it right where the cursor is. Go ahead and hold down the insert key on the numeric keypad, which is the 0 key, and tap the + key on the numeric keypad, it will say…. WE: Pointer route to cursor And visually, the mouse pointer is synchronized right where the actual blinking cursor is within Notepad. Now you could go off and read relative to the mouse, or leave the mouse there and move the cursor, however you want to deal with that. Those are some of the basic keys of reading relative to the cursor. Let’s move on to the next section.