Windows Related items

Apple has recently released three apps for Windows for the Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch which are intended to replace iTunes. Below are links to each apps user guide. You can find the apps in the Microsoft store.

Voice Access in Windows 11

Be My Eyes Commands

You can get Be My Eyes for Windows from the Be My Eyes web site here:
Be My Eyes for Windows

After you have installed Be My Eyes, you can run it by tapping the Windows key and typing be my eyes and it should come up as Be My Eyes App: or use the run dialog...

When you launch Be My Eyes on a computer, you have the following options:
* Describe my screen (Keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + H) Button * Take picture using built in camera (Keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + J) Button * Describe picture from File Explorer (Keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + K) Button * Describe clipboard (Keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + L) Button

If you tab beyond the clipboard button, you land on the settings tab, if you hit enter on settings, you get these options:
* Customize keyboard shortcuts Link * Sounds enabled Button checked * Terms of Service Link * Privacy Policy Link * Send us feedback Button * Help Center Button

If you press enter on the button labelled "Help Center Button" you will go to this web page:
Be My Eyes Help Center

Since the default keystroke for Jaws and for the Take picture using built in camera in Be My Eyes is the same, you may want to change the Be My Eyes command. This is what I did:

Hit enter on the settings tab in Be My Eyes and tab to customize keyboard commands, and press spacebar, then tab to the Take picture of the screen alt+control+j and press the space bar.
You will hear:
Press a key combination read only edit
It then speaks the default again:
Alt + Ctrl + J
I pressed alt+control+shift+j and got:
Keyboard shortcut set to Alt + Ctrl + Shift + J.
Then it repeats the new command:
Take picture: Alt + Ctrl + Shift + J Button.
Tab to the back button and press the spacebar and you are set.

Using Anyburn with Jaws

Here is a word document with my instructions about using AnyBurn to burn MP3 discs while using the Jaws screen reader.

Sharon's Shortcuts

I recently learned about this resource. Sharon's Shortcuts give lots of helpful shortcuts that anyone can use from the keyboard. On her page you can sign up for the Shortcut of the Week if you want. Or, just visit it to see what has been added. It looks to be a very useful site to bookmark.

TCA Media Player 3

Here is a xip file of TCA Media Player 3 without a password. Note: it only works with Windows 10 and later.

TCA Media Player is a program to download audio files from Youtube and other places. It is not a traditional program, in that you simply unzip it into a folder and run the .exe file, paste the URL of the video in the box that asks for the URL, tab through and set any parameters you wish to change and hit enter.
It seems to just work.
If you run into a problem where it either doesn't unzip completely, or asks for a password, here are the steps Mike B. gave me to fix that. Note: I did not zip it with the password, and I'm using Windows 11 so you may have different results than I did. This program may be blocked from fully unzipping in the properties and therefore won't fully unzip unless the below steps are completed. If it asks for a password, it is: tecnoconocimientoaccesible Press, Alt + enter, on the, TCAMD3.zip, folder to open the properties. Tab to the, Unblock button, press the spacebar to unblock this file now, alt + tab, away from the screen and then, Alt + tab, back to it, and tab to, Okay, and press the spacebar to save / close.

YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts

Thanks to JM on the BlindTech email list for the link to the YouTube Keyboard Shortcuts. I prefer this kind of info in either an Excel Spreadsheet or a Word Table. I've made both documents available here.

Windows and Office accessibility support from Microsoft

Call us

Call 1-800-936-5900
Available Monday to Friday from 6 AM to 10 PM, and Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 6 PM Pacific Time.

ASL

Videophone 1-503-427-1234
We offer American Sign Language (ASL) support by videophone from Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time.

Twitter

Windows, Office, and Xbox accessibility support now available via Twitter Direct Message.

Send us your question via direct message at: @MSFTEnable

Be My Eyes

A free app that connects blind and low-vision people with volunteers for visual assistance through a live video call.

Chat with us

Chat with an expert 24/7. Receive answers to your questions about disability support all week long, day or night. Go to the answer desk web site to find the chat link:

Biblos 5 Word Processor/Braille translation software, free

Biblos 5 is a software package that allows you to export into a variety of formats including lots of different braille codes/languages.
You can read more about it and download it at:

If you have questions, you can write the author at: Giuseppe at digrande.it

Pontes Media Downloader

Pontes Media Downloader allows you to download and convert YouTube videos and likely other videos as well. Simply copy the URL of a video to the clipboard, run Pontes Media Downloader and wait for the tone.

When you hear the tone, Pontes has recognized the video and now, press the escape key, then you can tab through your options.

Once you have alt+tabbed back to Pontes, tab and the first thing is probably "Best source format available," which you should leave alone.
Tab again and you will have the combo box of download formats. The default is "download original video only, no conversion." You can download into a wide variety of formats. You can either arrow up and down through the options, or use shortcuts to jump to the format of your choice. Here are a few of the shortcuts:
* 4 - Target: MP4 video format
* V - Target: AVI video format
* 3 - Target: MP3 audio format
* M - Target: M4A audio format
* G - Target: OGG audio format
* W - Target: WAV audio format
* F - Target: FLAC audio format
* A - Target: AAC audio format
Tab again and you should be on the Download Link, hit enter and wait. If it is a playlist, you will hear tones as each file is downloaded and converted. If it is one file, you will hear a tone when it is finished downloading.
With version 3.52, after hitting enter on download, you may have to hit alt+d and arrow up or down to download X file and hit enter once again, then listen for the tones.

During a download, you can check the view log to check the progress/status of the download.
Also, if a download unexpectedly stops, looking at the log will alert you to that because the download message won't change over time. There is often no other way to know if a download has unexpectedly stopped or if conversion has unexpectedly not occurred and the program is just sitting there after the download.

You can move to the bottom line of the log with the "end" key. Keep pressing end to hear updated information.

When finished looking at the log, close the window with alt f4. That will return you to the Pontes Downloader main window.

The view log command is: Control G - Show selected download log.

The default file location is in your default Documents folder which you can get to from within Pontes Media Downloader by pressing Control+e.

You can get a complete list of the shortcuts as a txt file by pressing control+K while in the Pontes Media Downloader program, and tab a few times, and you should hear:
Keyboard shortcuts Control D
Search for action...
Export as text file Button
The shortcut.txt file will be in the Pontes default download folder.

Here is the keyboard shortcut file in Word docx format with headings.

Jaws Script Resources

Doug Lee's Jaws Scripts

Doug Lee offers quite a few free scripts for Jaws on his page.

Hartgen Consultancy

Brian Hartgen has many paid and a few free scripts for Jaws. His resources are well worth investigating.

Jaws Scripts Page

The Jaws Scripts page has some free scripts

The Snowman Scripts

The Snowman offers several paid scripts mostly for audio content/editing on his page.

Jaws Voice Assistant Commands

Here is a link to get the Jaws help section in a Word document with Tables. You can bring up the context menu and save it as a document, or just open it and save it:

Jaws Laptop Keystrokes

I put the Jaws Laptop Keystrokes into an Excel file as I personally find this a more accessible format than in the Jaws help topic.
Here is the Excel file:
JawsLaptopKeystrokes.xlsx

Symbol Descriptions and their hex values

IN the Jaws settings folder, there is a txt document of thousands of symbols with their hex values. If you have the hex value, you can insert the symbol in your Word document. Enter the information after the plus sign in a word document, then imediately press alt+x and then spacebar and the symbol will be inserted.

For example, if the Hex value is U+1FEA you could enter 1F7EA, press alt+x and spacebar and have a Purple Square in your document. It also works if you include the U+, at least in my Word 2016 from Microsoft 365.

Thanks to Brian Lee for pointing me to that file.

I believe in making things as user friendly as possible and did not find the txt file very user friendly. It has the hex value followed by the symbol name. I put all this into an Excel spreadsheet with the symbol name in column A and the Hex value in columb b. This way, you can search for the symbol name, and then tab or right arrow to column b to get your hex value. Here is that XLSX file.

Narrator Keyboard Commands

Here is a link to a Word .docx file of the Narrator Keyboard Commands, Touch Gestures and Scan Mode.
NarratorKeyboardCommands,TouchGesturesAndScanMode.docx

Appendix B: Narrator keyboard commands and touch gestures

Below I have put the information from the word document above into an Excel spreadsheet with several sections. I am putting two paragraphs I left out of the excel copy here for reference.
There is a table of contents with hyperlinks to the main sheet. I'm new at this, so it should open on "Sheet 2" which is the table of contents and is above sheet 1. If you just want to manually jump to sheet 1, use the Control+PageDown command. To get back to the Table of Contents, use control+PageUp.

Narrator key:
You can choose what modifier key you want to use in Narrator commands. Both the Caps lock and Insert keys serve as your Narrator key by default. You can use either of these keys in any command that uses the Narrator key. The Narrator key is referred to as simply "Narrator" in commands. You can change your Narrator key in Narrator settings.

Narrator Scan mode basics To turn scan mode on and off, press Narrator + Spacebar. When scan mode is turned on, use the Up arrow key and Down arrow key to navigate apps and webpages. Press Enter or Spacebar to activate an item that you want to use, such as a button in an app, a link in a webpage, or a text box.
Scan mode turns on automatically when you use Microsoft Edge to browse the web. It also turns on automatically when you open any Windows app where you turned it on before. If you turn scan mode off for an app, it will remain off for that app until you turn it on again. Scan mode automatically turns off in edit fields so you can enter text. Press up or down arrow again to leave the edit field and resume scan mode. Scan mode commands
When scan mode is turned on, use the keys in the Scan Mode section to navigate apps and webpages.
Note: If you are hearing silent stops in scan mode, this may be because Narrator is stopping at a punctuation mark. You can increase your punctuation verbosity by pressing Narrator + Alt + Plus sign (+) or Minus sign (-).

Chrom Browser Tutorial for Jaws by David Moore

Here is a word document formatted with headings of David Moore's excellent tutorial on using the Chrome Browser with Jaws.
ChromeBrowserTutorialByDavidMoorewithHeadings.docx

Microsoft Edge Keyboard Shortcuts

Here is an excel spreadsheet that I created from the Microsoft Edge shortcuts provided by Mike B. on the Jaws users list.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows 10

Here is a Word Document that uses Tables and Headings for the extensive list of keyboard shortcuts from the Microsoft support page.
KeyboardShortcutsinWindows10.docx

Windows 10 Calculator keyboard commands

I put a list of commands that was shared on the Jaws users list into a word file in a table and in an Excel spreadsheet. Both are in this zip file: Win10CalculatorKeyboardCommands.zip

WordWeb Pro

Wordweb is a dictionary that you can have running in the background to make it easy to look up definitions, synonyms, etc., from just about anywhere on your computer. It is very screen reader friendly. Check it out at: www.wordweb.info
It is also available for iOS or Android, search the App Store or Google Play store for Wordweb.

Last updated December 30, 2025

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