BigKeys Keyboards

Use of JAWS® with BigKeys LX

 

JAWS® for Windows, by Freedom Scientific Inc., is a popular screen reading software program.

 

The following information about using JAWS with the BigKeys LX keyboard is provided by John Spalding, Ft. Myers, Florida.

---

JAWS uses three major commands to read and speak the screen. These are

• RightArrow and LeftArrow, to move and speak the previous/next letter.
• UpArrow and DownArrow, to read and speak the previous/next line.
• Insert-DownArrow, to read and speak from the cursor to the end of the file.

The JAWS application makes use of two individual cursors: the JAWS cursor and the PC cursor. These cursors are toggled with + and - on the standard numeric keypad.

 

The primary use of the JAWS cursor is for DOS and reading web pages. The BigKeys LX keyboard always runs with the PC cursor activated. BigKeys LX does not have a numeric pad, so the cursor cannot be changed to the JAWS cursor. The lack of the JAWS cursor is only a conflict when when using DOS or reading a web page. DOS is now archaic so we will discount that as a problem.

 

Versions of JAWS prior to version 3.31 need the JAWS cursor to read web pages, but the JAWS cursor is unavailable on the LX. Versions of JAWS after version 3.3 use the PC cursor instead of the JAWS cursor for web pages so there is no problem. The change was made about two years ago, so there are a lot of the earlier versions out there.

 

BigKeys LX -vs- Standard Keyboard
used with JAWS

 

	Up/Down = Say Line		Ins Down = Say to End
	BigKeys LX keyboard	Standard keyboard	BigKeys LX keyboard	Standard keyboard
DOS	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Open Book	Yes	Yes	No (note 1)	No (note 1)
MS Word	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
My Docs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Web Page	Yes (note 3)	Yes (note 2)	Yes (note 3)	Yes (note 2)

 

Notes:

 

1. Ins / DownArrow does not work. Use F10.
   
2. On a standard keyboard using JAWS version 3.3 or earlier, use JAWS cursor for web pages.
3. For JAWS version 3.31 or later.