Reading Chat and Long Post in Microsoft Teams with NVDA

This article was written with the following specification:

Item	Name	Version
Screen Reader	NVDA	2020.1
Program	Microsoft Team	1.3.00.19173

Ahh, Microsoft Team… This is another powerful tool that you will love once you understand its capability.  It is a fusion of skype, Drive, Facebook, SharePoint and perhaps even more.

Like any software, learning how to operate with a provided shortcut key is the very first step for a screen reader user. Though it helps us to operate the software quickly, it may not help in some other small things that is not covered by the keys. Generally speaking, the provided shortcut key is only functioning in focus mode. Yet it lacks some important control over what you could do, i.e. breaking down a long post to smaller pieces. While browse mode in NVDA could achieve the same, it often reads out some information that is not important i.e. the sender’s name.

If there is one thing to share that makes your Team easy to use with NVDA, I would say the Document review feature.

Note: To understand what is review mode and navigation curser, please check out the NVDA 20.1 user guide. In the future, I will also write a bit about the different cursers described by NVDA.

The document review basically allow us to read text where your system caret is not able to reach.  For instance, the command prompt in your windows, or the text in windows 10 setting. With document review, your NVDA is able to read the text by lines or words or characters even in the focus mode. So, there is no worry if your team is sending you an article in the chat.

To access to the document review, press NVDA + Page up or down. You will notice there are 3 review modes for your usage. This include Document review, Screen review or Object review.

Since it is a review mode, the chat should be explored using your review curser, i.e. Numpad 1 to 9. If you are using the laptop keyboard layout, you could use:

·         NVDA + left or right (read by character)

·         NVDA + CTRL + Left or Right (Read by word)

·         NVDA + Up or Down (read the entire line)

If the chat or post has an attachment, you can hit enter and press tab twice to reach to the item. This include documents, photos or voice note.

While focus mode is useful, a long conversation will make you frustrated. For instance, the up down arrow which read one message at a time is highly not convenient if you are only interested in certain part of the conversation.

To resolve this issue, I would suggest to use Page up or Page down key, or Control + home or end in focus mode. It will safe your time from reading and searching through the entire conversation.

That is some short tips for now. Please share this with your friend if you find it useful.

Cheers.

5 Reasons Why Should You Consider Microsoft Narrator

This article was written with the following specification:

Item	Name	Version
Screen Reader	Microsoft Narrator	Windows 10 November 2019 update
Operating System	Windows 10	Version 1903

Ah, Narrator, the most avoidable screen reader for every blind user. Less responsive, lacking in terms of functionality and frequently hang just to name a few.
But now no more. This spare tire screen reader can be just as good as your NVDA or JAWs on certain areas. And these are the 5 big reasons why:

1.       Narrator is responsive and fast

From my experience, Narrator will announce or read things on the screen with some slide delay. For instance, whenever we switch between running application, it will hang for a while, making me wondering what is happening. However, the current version is just as responsive as JAWs for Windows and NVDA

2.       Narrator has good human sounding synthesizer

In addition to Microsoft David, Microsoft has several good sounding Synthesizer, such as Mark, (English Us), Microsoft Richard (English Canada), Microsoft Hui Hui, (Simplified Chinese China), Microsoft Ichiro (Japanese) and even Microsoft Rizwan (Malay, Malaysia). As the name implies, Narrator can read just like your human friend in your university. With the new setting, adding voices is as easy as ABC. Just go to setting > Ease of Access > Narrator > add more voices > under manage voices group, go to add voices. You can use the search box to search for the voice that you want.

3.       Narrator has command key that you are familiar

From reading date and time with Insert / caps log + F12,, to jumping around in a webpages with H, K, T and other keys, Narrator is catching up with NVDA and Jaws. Though there are some keys differ from the 2 of the most popular screen readers, switching to Narrator will not put you under a lot of stress to relearn everything that you have used to.

4.       Narrator is equipped with tan of shortcut key for web browsing

As briefly mentioned, in the previous point, Narrator allows you to read through the internet with tan of shortcut keys that you are familiar, such as h for heading, k for link, t for tables and so on. In another word, Narrator has a mode for web browsing and reading mode known as Scan mode (which is equivalence to the Browse mode of NVDA). In fact, it can do even more in Windows 10, and Microsoft products such as the Office Products.

5.       Narrator is featured with different view mode

Narrator can jump through different objects on your screen by changing its view mode. This include Items, form fields, sentences, paragraphs, and more, just like Talk Back on Android. To access to the different view mode in Narrator, press Insert/Caps Log + Page up or down to change the mode and press Insert/Caps Log + right / left curser to jump to the previous or next item according to the selected view mode. Based on my experience, Narrator is the first of its kind to be able to perform such action on Windows PC.

Although my favourite screen reader is still NVDA, Narrator has seriously caught my attention with its improvement. Guest what, this entire post is created with the help of Microsoft Narrator and Microsoft Edge!

Focus Mode and Browse Mode in NVDA? What is that?

If you are frustrated and start thinking why your Yahoo Mail, Gmail in standard view and Google drive is not Blind friendly, this writing may help you.

About 7 to 8 years ago, I was so frustrated with my Yahoo mail as the Yahoo Classic view were discontinued. The new Full feature to me is a nightmare as it is totally not accessible in comparison with the classic view that I have used to. In fact, I did some research on the shortcut key they have in the Full Feature, and attempted to use it. I ended up frustrated as none of those keys written there working. I gave up Yahoo mail and tried out Gmail as most of my Blind friend agreed to be more accessible, especially the basic html view, though it was not design for accessibility but for slow internet speed.

Long story short, I realized that it was not the mail provider, but myself who was not knowing that NVDA has something call focus mode to make these keys works.

For any NVDA user, you may realise that every time you are inserting a text on a search / edit box on the internet, there will be this “Ted” sound. The same goes to selecting items in a Combo box.  The common idea is that the sound meant to indicate that we are typing or not. But the truth is, we are switching between focus mode and browse mode. In short, if you are typing on an edit box, you are actually in focus mode, and while reading through an article on internet, you are using a browse mode.

The following is my simple understanding about browse mode and Focus mode in NVDA

·         Browse mode allows user to READ / browse through a webpage, word document and HTML files with some short cut keys. And these keys are usually element related, (element such as link, heading, graphics, table and more)

·         Browse mode allows you to jump from one element to another using a single letter navigation key, e.g. press k to the next link and press h jump to the next heading.

·         Focus mode enable you to focus on element and perform certain ACTION which include but not limited to executing instruction, typing, selecting items and more.

·         Focus mode allows you to type out the letters and use special keys that is featured in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, YouTube, Google Drive and more.

It is also important to note that NVDA will automatically switch its mode, e.g. NVDA go to focus mode (in the edit box) when we go to google search, depending on situation. However sometime, we can switch it manually by using NVDA Key + Space, especially we are intentionally using it to do certain thing. You will hear the similar “Ted” sound whenever you are entering an edit box, and you will hear “tum” sound, just like exiting an edit box, to change back to browse mode.

To see how useful is your focus mode, you can go to YouTube and play a video, and in focus mode (NVDA+space), press left or right arrow, press K or F. You will learn how cool it is to work with Focus Mode on YouTube. Remember, the focus mode can be activated in anywhere but not on an edit box or a combo box as it will mean that we are entering these elements. I wish you good luck to try out the focus mode!

A Brief on Screen Reader and Speech Synthesizer

Your gadget can read to you what they have on screen. Let’s explore further. Since 1986, this assistive technology has been developed to help the visually impaired to operate computer, and yeah, it is called screen reader.

Screen reader is a software that translate texts and elements (e.g. Graphics, Links, headings) and input (e.g. typing, mouse) to voice output through speech synthesizer and braille. In short, screen reader helps to read out and braille out whatever that appears on the screen. Speech synthesizer on the other hand is an artificial voice production that helps to convert text to speech output. It can be used by screen reader or other software/hardware for various purposes, such as how  Professor Stephen Hawking used speech synthesis technology to share his mind with us.

Do you know? Hatsune Miku is a singing synthesizer. The virtual pop star’s voice is provided by Saki Fujita, a singer and voice actor in Anime. You can read more about Miku, the Virtual Pop Star here. 

Just like any product, Screen reader has its own brand. Some of the major player include JAWs for Windows by Freedom Scientific and NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) by NV Access. Each screen reader is pre-equipped with a speech synthesizer, or text to speech engine. However the speech synthesizer can be purchase and added for better reading or for other language. For instance, NVDA can make good use of Microsoft API as their speech synthesizer. In a non-technical term, changing the speech synthesizer is like changing a reader for your computer / phone. Some reader may sound good at certain language, thus changing them to suit different purpose is a good practice.

If you are curious, the following screen reader is equipped with the following synthesizer by default.

Screen Reader	Default Synthesizer
JAWs and Windows Eyes	Eloquence
NVDA	eSpeak
Microsoft Narrator	Windows API/Core Voices
Talkback for Android	Google TTS

For me, they are 3 ways to evaluate how good a speech synthesizer is, which is through 1) how does it perform in high speed reading, 2) how clear the reading is, and 3) how natural (human sounding) it is while reading.

Finally, for you who are curious on how to activate your screen reader in your device, please

1.       Press Ctrl + Win + Enter to turn on Narrator for windows PC

2.       In your android phone, Go to setting > accessibility > Vision > Talkback (Please note that some device may have different directory of turning on talkback)

And do Check out this post to activate your default screen reader in your Apple iPhone