Tips for Working by Screen Reader

Much of your experience while navigating the activation wizard depends on optimizing the configuration of your screen reader. For example, the level of verbosity may not be set to read the entire window contents by default, and we recommend you set it to do so.

In the JAWS screen reader, the screen echo setting should be changed from Highlighted to All. We have done this for you in the configuration file that accompanies the Activation Wizard (actwiz.jcf).

You should take full advantage of your screen reader hot-key for Speak-all or Read Active Window. Under Microsoft Windows, the activation wizard window is spoken fully only when the wizard has just become active after the focus has been on another window. When you use the NEXT or BACK button to go from one page to the next, this is a change within the wizard and not a new window, so the next page is not read automatically. Therefore, the hot-key prompt becomes vital to know what is going on with each click on NEXT.

You can navigate into or away from a group of radio buttons using the TAB key, but you need to use the ARROW keys to navigate to, and set, the individual radio buttons within that group.

When you select a task that requires elevated privileges, expect to have the UAC dialog pop up after you click the NEXT button on the Main page. When you OK that dialog, the Wizard will come back in focus.

Known Issues

  1. The wizard has important instructions on most pages. They are not spoken just by tabbing through the active fields of the page. You have to watch out not to miss helpful information by making frequent use of your Read Active Window command.
  2. A "busy" box pops up during operations that take more than a second or two, but typically your screen reader does not speak it aloud to let you know that something is happening.
  3. A few users have had the experience that the wizard can disappear unexpectedly behind other windows. If you think this has happened, you can use ALT+TAB to bring it to the front again.
  4. If you enter the activation wizard from a Duxbury program About box, you return there when it completes, and you need to click OK to dismiss the About box and get back into the main program.