September Solutions
School has begun throughout the state of Maryland, and we at the Bridges Technical Assistance Center and Helpdesk explore solutions to help prepare for two environments we cannot control: Medical care and Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 11.
- September 3: Accessibility for Medical Check-in and Information
- September 10: Advocating for Medical Accessibility
- September 17: Comparing and Contrasting Windows 10 and Windows 11 (Celebrating National IT Professionals Day with our special guest contributor, accessible technology expert Curtis Chong)
- September 24: Tips For Using Windows 11 with JAWS (from our special guest contributor, accessible technology expert Curtis Chong)
This week, our special guest contributor Curtis Chong. Curtis helps us dive into Windows 11 with the JAWS screen reader.
Meet Our Guest Contributor, Curtis Chong
Curtis Chong is a nationally renown accessible technology expert. He is also a great blind mentor, and he selflessly shares his expertise – today with our Bridges stakeholders. Check out this Curtis Chong biography to find out more about this talented gentleman.
Windows 11
Windows 11 is the latest operating system from Microsoft; it is the operating system installed on any Windows computer purchased today. As has always been the case with operating systems from Microsoft, there is a bit of configuration work that needs to be performed in order to make this operating system more usable for folks who use screen readers like JAWS or NVDA.
Here is my personal Windows 11 configuration checklist for new Windows 11 systems that I am helping people to set up. These items represent the bare minimum for any system that I want to make usable for a screen reader user. Where necessary, I will provide a brief explanation as to the importance of a particular item. If anyone is interested in specific steps to accomplish the configuration tasks listed here, please feel free to email me at chong.curtis@gmail.com.
Curtis Chong’s Personal Windows 11 Configuration Checklist
1. Disable Windows Fast Startup.
Windows Fast Startup tends to keep things in memory even after the computer is shut down. Thus, when restarting or rebooting the computer, you do not actually load a fully clean system. Also, if you are running a trial version of JAWS which has a 40-minute timer, Fast Startup makes it more difficult to reset the timer.
2. Configure File Explorer not to hide file extensions.
Set up File Explorer to show “This Computer” when opened with the keyboard shortcut WINDOWS+E; and set File Explorer not to use checkboxes, to show the full path in the title bar, and to open folders in a separate process.
Configuring File Explorer to show file extensions such as “.docx”, “.txt”, or “.jpg” makes it easier for screen reader users to know what program is likely to open when pressing Enter on a specific file. For whatever reason, ever since Windows became a viable operating system, Microsoft has never chosen to make this setting the default–hence, the need for us to perform a bit of extra work here.
Having the full path displayed in the File Explorer Title Bar makes it easier for screen reader users to know where a specific file or folder can be found on a specific drive, typically C:.
3. Remove items from the Taskbar that represent programs that are not actually running.
Unpin (remove) programs from the Taskbar. These include items like File Explorer, Microsoft Edge, etc. which are placed on the Taskbar by default even though these programs are not actually active when Windows starts up.
My preference is always to have a Taskbar that is essentially blank when none of the programs I typically use are running. Thus, if none of the programs I use is running, I can press the command WINDOWS+T, and if the Taskbar is empty, I know that all of my programs are closed.
4. Configure the Taskbar by removing all of the widgets (e.g., Weather, News, Chat, etc.).
My personal preference is to have none of the widgets running and/or available on my computer–things like Weather, News, etc. Other people may feel differently about this, but as for me, I prefer to completely turn all of the Windows 11 widgets off. This removes a lot of what I regard as unnecessary clutter in my system.
5. Turn off the Windows Snap feature.
If you don’t do this, you can’t use the keyboard command WINDOWS+UPARROW to maximize the screen in specific applications. You are forced to enter ALT+SPACE then X. I find maximizing the screen with WINDOWS+UPARROW to be faster and easier, but this will not work unless you turn off Windows Snap.
6. Configure the System Tray to show things like Windows Security, Safely Remove Hardware, etc.
This is a task that might need to be repeated every time you install something new. In Windows 10 and prior operating systems, there was a checkbox that, when checked, made everything running in the System Tray visible. In Windows 11, Microsoft has chosen to remove this checkbox. So, if you want a particular program to be shown in the System Tray (called the Notification Area in Windows 11), you have to indicate this explicitly in Windows Settings.
7. Check System Sounds and be sure that, at least, the startup sound is set to play when the computer is powered up.
I have a plethora of other sounds that I can share so that when programs are opened or closed or when the screen is maximized or minimized, certain specific sounds can be generated. Hearing when programs are being opened or closed is extremely useful to let screen reader users know that something is happening in the background.
8. Check your power settings to be sure that nothing goes to sleep after a certain amount of inactive time.
I have a backup system that, when first used on a new computer, needs to run for a few days without interruption. By default, computers are set up to power off after a certain amount of inactive time. This was a problem for me, so I fixed it by setting up my system to keep running instead of automatically turning itself off.
9. Download, install, and configure Adobe Reader so it is the default viewer for PDF documents. Configure the program so that the entire document is loaded into memory, and turn off the new menus in favor of the old traditional menu bar.
In my experience, the free Adobe Reader software, provides the best overall experience for screen reader users who need to read PDF documents. Also, the JAWS screen reader has a feature called Convenient OCR which integrates well with Adobe Reader to improve the accessibility of documents that have been scanned into a PDF file.
10. If you are going to use Microsoft 365, configure Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to bring up a blank document when each of these programs is started.
Consider whether or not it would be advantageous to have Office Sounds and whether to use the Classic or the Modern version of those sounds. Also, decide if you want to configure the Trust Center in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint so that they will not go into protected view when opening documents from external sources (e.g., email attachments). JAWS is not able to read documents that are opened in Protected View.
11. If you are going to use the Classic Outlook program to send and receive emails, turn off the Reading Pane.
Visually speaking, the Reading Pane makes it easier to read email messages at a glance. But from the perspective of a screen reader user, pressing Enter to open specific email messages provides a better experience–especially for those email messages that are designed to resemble dynamic web pages. Closing a message using this approach is easily accomplished by pressing ESCAPE.
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This unique project is being coordinated through The IMAGE Center of Maryland, a center for independent living in Towson, and it is funded by a grant from the Maryland Department of Education Division of Special Education/Early Intervention Services.