Why I don’t use Dragon’s “scroll down” command

With either Firefox or IE, if you say “scroll down,” you are taken to the very bottom of the page. Especially with Firefox, I don’t know that there’s a fix for this. Therefore, I just say “page down” or “page up.” Alternately, you can say “move down/up [some number].” “Go down/up [some number]” works also. But to me the movement is too jerky. More often, I just use the Autoscrolling Bookmarklet. (For Firefox, that is; I don’t use IE.) That way, I don’t go hoarse.

However, if you are an IE user, Nuance wrote a perk for you, which they did not extend to the evil stubborn Firefox users. If you use IE, you have auto scrolling commands built in. Look in your Command Browser. (The auto scrolling was not enough to make me switch back to IE for Dragon use; I would rather tinker with settings and add-ons and push for accessibility in order to have a choice of what I will use. Monopolies, even if unintentional, disgust me.)

How to use Windows Mouse Keys

I wonder sometimes if I get ahead of myself. A lot of times I don’t mention things that I think are very basic, simply because I’m so used to them. A case in point: the built-in Windows accessibility options. I frequently mention Mouse Keys, for example, but I’ve never posted on how to set it up, simply because I assume the keyboard user already knows, or has already looked it up in the Accessibility Options.  [EDIT: I have indeed posted the instructions before, but will leave this post up because it's more  to the point.]  However, it shows up in my stats often enough that maybe I’ve been too hasty. So, here are some Mouse Keys pointers.

1. Activate Mouse Keys = left Alt, left Shift, NumLock. (NOTE: you may want to activate the Sticky Keys feature first, if you haven’t already.)

2. Press Alt S, then Alt M.

3. Press Alt S to go into the configuration.

4. Use the underlined keyboard shortcuts to adjust the speed and acceleration of the cursor via the arrow keys.

5. One of the most important settings is whether you use Mouse Keys with NumLock on or off.

A. If you use Mouse Keys with NumLock on to control the mouse cursor, you will not be able to use the numeric keypad to enter numbers. In this setting, turning NumLock off lets you use the keypad to move the blinking cursor.

B. If you use Mouse Keys with NumLock off to control the mouse cursor, you will not be able to use the keypad to control the blinking cursor. In this setting, turning NumLock on will allow you to use the numeric keypad to enter numbers.

6. Use Tab or the shortcuts to press OK, then Apply, then OK.

Cursor movement is pretty self-explanatory — it corresponds to the arrows on the keys. Number keys without arrows correspond to diagonal directions, relative to their placement on the keypad.

Left click = 5

Right-click = -5

Return to left click mode = /

Double-click = +

Drag = 0, then a direction key

Drop = .

Click Firefox links with the apostrophe ‘ and Dragon

The auto scrolling bookmarklet prompted me to write this post, but the fix I’m going to describe applies to Firefox globally as well. I said earlier that the bookmarklet’s number key speed shortcuts conflicted with Mouseless Browsing, but even if you’re not using Mouseless Browsing, it also conflicts with the accessibility.typeaheadfind settings in Firefox’s about:config. So, if you say or type a number to finely adjust the speed (you can also, it turns out, just press the + or – as long as you’re not using Mouse Keys), your speed will adjust, but Firefox will focus on where that number appears. Therefore, chances are good you’ll lose your place in whatever you’re reading.

However, there is a way to access links reliably without either typeaheadfind or Mouseless Browsing turned on. Just press or say apostrophe. This will temporarily turn on the accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly setting, and you can say or type your link word, then press Enter. However, you may still wish to go into about:config and turn off the timeout setting if you’re a keyboard user and type slowly.

Compared to having the setting enabled automatically, this is a slightly clumsier process, especially if you have a keyboard on which the ‘ is a shifted key. It would be somewhat more bearable for Dragon users, though, especially if you could create an add-on command. Here is my Vocola command, taken from my list of Firefox commands:

[Click] Link <_anything> = “‘” $1 {Enter};

That was a basic clicking link, but if you want to account for opening a link in a new tab, here is the command:

[Open] Link <_anything> new tab = “‘” $1 {Ctrl+Enter};

Now you should be able to keep your place while you scroll. Also, you might want to use this command anyway, because even though Dragon will occasionally click a Firefox link for you, Dragon itself does not have a way to open a new tab when it clicks something.

Hey programmers! We’re down here!

It strikes me that half the e-mail I get in my inbox is useless to me. All the technological newsletters talk about is Windows versus Linux/UNIX, open source or “indie” software versus Microsoft, and so forth. If you depend to any great extent on speech recognition, you still don’t have a choice. It’s usually Windows and Microsoft all the way, because like it or not, Microsoft is the only one who’s explicitly going to make things accessible for us. (Not everything — see Visual Studio — but more than most.) Many programmers don’t seem to give a damn, or they’re quick to blame everything on Nuance or Windows Speech Recognition. (There are a few exceptions, e.g. Jarte.)

Now, it galls me to stick up for a company whose technical support is rude and/or clueless, and who’s taken to borderline false advertising, but I will say this much: at this point, Nuance seems to have done as much as they can. Compatibility with assistive technology goes 2 ways. Speech recognition can’t work fully with applications that don’t support SAPI. SAPI is the brain, or central nervous system, of speech recognition. Speech recognition can’t run on anything else but SAPI. Supporting SAPI-dependent technology is, like it or not, the other programmer’s job. Also, it looks even worse if the other programmer can’t even be bothered to use general menu controls such as Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) or its successor. MSAA is not SAPI, but it helps a lot when we want to access menus vocally.

Compared to something like screen magnification or screen readers, speech recognition is a newer technology (though it’s been around for quite a while), so I don’t fault programmers for being possibly unaware of SAPI. Also, I am aware that integrating technologies is difficult and takes time. So I don’t fault programmers for saying that it’s difficult, or having to go through quite a lot of trial and error. But from some of the attitudes I see — “Oh, it’s faster for me to just reach over to the keyboard and mouse, why would you need speech recognition?” “I can type 100 words per minute, that’s lazy” — it looks on a bad day like they just can’t be bothered. If compatibility can’t be achieved because of a genuine program-language barrier, that’s understandable and acceptable. But what gets me is that, with so much apathy, there’s no way of knowing whether the problem is that nobody can do it, or just that nobody’s thinking about it. If you’re one of the programmers trying to do something about it, I’m not referring to you, and I thank you.

P.S. I don’t mention Macs because they do, at least, have MacSpeech Dictate — though I hear it’s still catching up to the Windows Dragon. Also, I am aware of the OpenOffice API Project, though I don’t know if they’d have anything to do with SAPI. I am also aware that Linux truly cannot physically support Dragon, as is explained here.

Click Thunderbird links with Dragon

If you haven’t found it yet, here’s a way to click links in a Thunderbird e-mail message with Dragon without using the mouse commands — basically, Thunderbird has a typeaheadfind.linksonly setting too.

To access Thunderbird’s version of about:config, go to Tools — Options — Advanced. Under the General tab, click the Config Editor button. Highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly and press Enter to set it to true. Now, you can say a word in the link to open it — the link will be highlighted, and simply say “press Enter.”

Or, if the link is spelled in such a way that there aren’t any pronounceable words, you can tell Dragon to type a few of the letters, and get the same result. If there’s more than one instance of what you’re trying to say, tell Dragon to press Control G. The link will open in a new tab, at least in Firefox. I don’t know what it does with IE, because it’s been a while since I’ve used it — so long, in fact, that I still have version 6. (I have a feeling I should have upgraded to version 7, just in case, but ah well. I’ll live.)

Typeaheadfind: Click Firefox links with Dragon, without Mouseless Browsing

As I’ve said, Dragon 10 and Firefox have gotten to the point that you can say a word in a link to click it, but this only works maybe 60% of the time. (That just seemed like the appropriately lukewarm number to describe the programs’ half-assed interaction.) I’m not sure why. Luckily for us, there’s a workaround. Well, 2, if you count Mouseless Browsing. But this workaround is for those who may dislike Mouseless Browsing for whatever reason — this one is built into the browser.

Go to the address bar and enter about:config. Go there. First, highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind. Its value will probably be false. Press Enter to set this value to true. Then, highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly. Press Enter to set this to true.

This allows you to dictate any part of a link as long as it’s a pronounceable word. So if you say something and Dragon doesn’t click it, no worries — Firefox will highlight in green what you’ve said, and transfer the keyboard focus to it so that all you have to say is either “go there” or “press Enter.” It’s different from Mouseless Browsing in that depending on the words you use, there might be duplicates, and Firefox will focus on the 1st instance so that you have to say “press Control G” until you get the instance you want (or create a Vocola or KnowBrainer “find again” command if you wish). To open a link in a new tab this way, say “press Control Enter,” and to open it in a new window, say “press Shift Enter.” Between this workaround and Dragon 10’s own spotty ability, I barely notice the seams anymore. (Though if Mozilla ever decided to do some research and actually make Firefox SAPI compliant if that’s possible, I certainly wouldn’t complain!)

Tabfocus: Access Firefox text fields etc. with Dragon

While Firefox is not seamless, the Mozilla developers have indeed at least been meeting us halfway, though perhaps unintentionally as many programmers are still woefully ignorant of speech recognition requirements. I just didn’t know it, because they don’t describe their accessibility options well at all. Bah.

While Dragon and Firefox have approached a level of semi-civility when it comes to clicking links (provided the website is compliant), one of Firefox’s main obstacles to navigation remains the inability to use commands like “click checkbox/radio button/text field.” I don’t know if that will change anytime soon, because Firefox’s user interface is written in JavaScript, which is a difficult language for some assistive technologies to play with. This is why so many people have been using the Mouseless Browsing add-on — it provides a way for us to vocally access the link, checkbox, field, or button by telling Dragon to press the corresponding numeral. However, a lot of people dislike using Mouseless Browsing because for them, the numbers clutter up the page. If you’re one of these people, Firefox has a few options built in that should make it a lot easier on you.

Unfortunately, these are not obvious unless you’re comfortable with about:config, which is Firefox’s skeleton key in terms of customizing its default behavior. Go to the address bar and enter about:config, and go there. If you get a message about voiding your warranty, ignore it.

You’ll see a bunch of entries that begin with “accessibility.” The one that pertains to accessing fields and boxes is called accessibility.tabfocus. Contrary to what I first thought, this has nothing to do with the number of tabs you can have open at once. You’ll see that it contains an integer value, probably 7. Highlight it and tell Dragon to press Shift-F10, which will give you the context menu for that option. Choose Modify, because you need to decrease the number.

Anywhere from 1 to 3 is a good number — nothing above that. These numbers restrict where your cursor focus goes when you press the tab key — it limits the tab key to finding lists, text fields, and buttons/checkboxes, in the order in which they appear. If you set it to 1, saying “tab” will put you into text fields only, and you say the tab key until you get to the text field that you want. Usually this is only a couple of times. If you set it to 3, you can access any field, list, box or (compliant) button, repeating until you get to the one you want. Again, the repetition isn’t usually excessive.

I know this method isn’t perfect compared to just zeroing in on whatever you want, but I think it’s a pretty decent workaround. Next up is a way to access links without mouseless browsing enabled.

Firefox 3.5 RC1, Dragon 10 and TSF

Okay, so the main reason I was looking forward to Firefox 3.5 was the promise of Text Services Framework support. TSF’s relevant function is to support dictation into text fields, while keeping the ability to select and correct by voice. You can still dictate into text fields that don’t have TSF enabled, but your words  or punctuation may run together,  or your correction may not take. So, TSF is a step in the right direction, and I cheerfully downloaded the release candidate of Firefox 3.5.

I figured I would try dictating directly into this post field to test TSF. Surprise! The Select-and-Say indicator on the Dragon bar remains dark. While I can dictate and make limited corrections, some words still run together and the insertion point will stop just before punctuation marks if I try to return to the end of the line after the correction. Occasionally, I can’t select or correct words at all. Continuous dictation, however, seems to be okay, so I can still do it in a pinch — just don’t expect full capability. In short, nothing is really broken — it’s just that nothing has been fixed, either. It’s the same old Firefox. Stick with the Dictation Box or Word or something as a buffer.

I can continue to use Firefox as I normally would, because everything else is still vocally accessible. And 3.5 has some cool features, such as private browsing. In addition, their options menu has gotten slightly voice-friendlier, as well as plain user friendly. You no longer have to go through the about: config menu in order to turn off suggestions in the address bar;  simply look under Tools — Options — Privacy.  Press Alt-U,  say “nothing,” and press Enter. (Then tab to OK and press Enter again, because the OK and Cancel buttons still can’t be spoken.)

I do like some of the new settings, and I’m glad that nothing major got broken. Firefox will continue to be my default browser, and when the stable version of 3.5 ships, I’ll download it and continue to use it. But I really hope that the omission of TSF support is a temporary setback, and that they will fully implement it in the stable version of 3.5.I might do a more mainstream review of 3.5 after I mess around a bit, but wanted to give a heads up about the elusive TSF.

Disability and tech: stereotypes?

I’ve been puzzling over something, and I’m not sure whether I’m annoyed or not. I’m having problems getting the right words out of my mouth, so the best way I can say it right now is that I hate it when people try to make my stereotypes for me.

I do fit several, particularly of the cognitive variety. For example, I don’t drive, not even a modified car. It has nothing to do with my physical disability and everything to do with the sensory one: I simply can’t take in the onslaught of information that comes at me and still make my arm and leg react quickly enough. What are stereotypes to an outsider are simply traits to me. I’m comfortable with these, because they’re me. What bothers me are the manufactured ones, the ones that people think they have to save me from fitting, or that I’m in danger of being pushed into by other people.

I do sporadic volunteering. Some of it has to do with technology, because as long as my tools are compatible and I have permission to install them, I can navigate it pretty well — better, in some ways, than my colleagues who don’t go further than clicking on an icon with the mouse. I can get into the computer a bit more, because learning how to do that was a necessity — for keyboard shortcuts, setting up macros, and all that, not to mention learning how to troubleshoot my home computer because I couldn’t afford to part with the only computer I could fully use. These skills also come in handy on public computers, where the accessibility options are often locked down. (Head, meet desk. But I digress.) And besides, programming fascinates me, even though my C++ study is hard going. I LIKE computers.

But another thing I enjoy is storytelling. A friend I volunteer with elsewhere asked me to assist, knowing that, but in the process seemed to imply that it would be for my own good for this reason: “I think when people [employers] get someone with a disability, they just stick them behind a computer.” Meaning, I suppose, that the request was a way of saving me from being hidden behind the evil computer, à la the shamed relative being stuffed in the attic.  Now, I have no idea if the stereotype is true. People assume that everyone in my generation has familiarity with computers, but I came late to it. So I really couldn’t be pushed into it, but came to it on my own. I don’t know if other people have been pushed into it, though. If so, yes, that sucks.

I just can’t understand why Friend said it in relation to me. Friend knows I troubleshoot people’s computers if I can. And really, I wouldn’t mind being “stuck” behind a computer. I mean, hello, I can’t lift things much, and even lifting small things wears me out some days. Ergo, which part of the job is going to be more liberating for me? Take a wild guess.

I think what I resent more is that now when I do my storytelling, it’s not going to feel like something I enjoy. It’s going to feel like some awkward form of charity that I didn’t even want. Storytelling, where I could always put my vocal expression and word-personhood to good use without worry, has always been natural to me, even if I’m not as physically animated as other people. Even though I’ll never be a professional or anything, I always enjoy it. It irks me to think that now it’s half going to feel like I’m doing a favor, by getting out of some “shell” that was never there in the first place. (And it doesn’t help that my evil computer — or Dragon NaturallySpeaking more precisely — has helped me immensely in practicing my diction and technique. Go figure.)

Restart Dragon vocally: Vocola

To use certain memory intensive programs, I not only have to end unnecessary processes, but also temporarily turn off the functions in Dragon I don’t need for that particular program. (I’ll go into this more when I talk about using Visual C++ for my programming homework.) For example, I disable the HTML commands if the memory sucker doesn’t require the internet. When I’m done, I enable them again. The unfortunate side effect is that Dragon requires a restart for the change to take effect. For some stupid reason, there’s no native restart command (in Preferred, anyway). This can be a problem if you’re totally voice dependent. Thus a Vocola command:

Dragon restart = HeardWord(close, naturally, speaking) Wait(7000) AppBringUp (”C:\Program Files\Nuance\NaturallySpeaking10\Program\natspeak.exe”);

Note that even if you have set the microphone to start asleep (yellow), it may remain green as the restart command executes.