Quickly Starting Jaws
For our first Accessibility Agony Aunt, we answer questions about JAWS crashing and how to effectively navigate the ribbon menu in Microsoft Outlook.
Letter
Hello,
I keep having issues at work where my JAWS crashes. Whenever this happens, I have to manually restart JAWS which I find quite difficult without sighted assistance and sometimes I just have to reset the computer. I was wondering if there was a keystroke to do this?
Thanks
Rick
Setting Up a JAWS Shortcut Key
Hi Rick,
Having to restart JAWS manually can be tricky. There is no inbuilt keystroke to start JAWS; however, you can set a shortcut key yourself quite easily to do this by doing the following:
- Go to your desktop and navigate to the JAWS icon.
- Press the Applications Key or Shift+F10 to open the context menu.
- Arrow Down to Properties (Arrowing Up is actually quicker here as the menu loops) and press Enter to open the Properties window.
- Tab through the fields until you get to the Shortcut Key field. When in this field, press the key combination you want to use to start JAWS (we normally suggest Control+Alt+J as this doesn’t conflict with any other standard keystrokes).
- Press Enter to save the changes. At this point, you may get a message that you require admin privileges to continue. Press Enter on the continue button and if you have the required permissions, the new shortcut key will be added and you can press it to start JAWS the next time it crashes.
You can set up a shortcut key in the same way for anything you have on the desktop. You just have to be careful that the keystroke you choose doesn’t conflict with an existing keystroke (and remember some keystrokes can be global and others can be application specific).
If you need a hand with your assistive tech, whether it is a screen reader, magnifier, speech to text system, mind mapping tool or anything else, you can ask the Accessibility Agony Aunt for help. Email your questions to Questions@blazie.co.uk - we aim to respond to all questions within 5 working days.