A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader, written by David Bailes. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.
A control is an object which enables user interaction or input, and common examples are buttons, edit boxes, and list views. This is a guide for the controls which are used are used in Windows XP and in the programs which run under Windows XP. Controls are used both in the main windows of programs, and dialog boxes.
The following sections which describe the various controls are in alphabetical order. The last two sections describe the selection of single and multiple items in various forms of lists.
There are various types of button: standard, menu, and split.
A standard command button is used for starting some action. It's normally rectangular, and has a label such as OK, Yes, No, etc.. To press a button, press Enter or Spacebar.
A menu button is similar to a normal button, except that pressing one opens a menu, rather than executing a command. A menu button is indicated visually by a downward pointing triangle to the right of the name of the button, but unfortunately, Jaws just reads the name. You can always press a menu button using Down Arrow, and sometimes using Enter and Spacebar. Examples of menu buttons are the Page, Tools, and Help menu buttons on the second toolbar of Internet Explorer 7. Note that pressing these buttons using either Enter or Spacebar doesn't work.
A split button consists of two parts. One part behaves like a standard button. The other part behaves like a menu button, and opens a menu containing commands which are related to the command which is executed by the standard button part of the split button.
The standard button part of the split button contains a label, which can either be text or a graphic, and this is the name of the command executed by this part of the split button, and the name of the split button which Jaws reads. The part of the split button which opens a menu contains a triangle, which indicated for sighted users that it opens a menu.
Normally a split button is split so that the standard button part is on the left hand side, and the menu button part on the right. However, sometimes they are split so that the standard button part is the top part, and the menu button part is the bottom part.
The keystrokes for pressing the two parts of a split button depend on where it is in the user interface. There are two main cases: when it's not on a ribbon, and when it's on a ribbon.
You can press the standard part of the split button using the normal keystrokes for pressing a button: Enter, and Spacebar. The keystroke for pressing the menu button part of the split button depends on whether the split button is part of a row of controls, or part of a column of controls. If the split button is in a toolbar, where the controls are arranged in a row, then you press the menu button part of the split button by pressing Down Arrow. Alternatively, if the split button is part of a column, where then you press the menu button part by pressing Right Arrow.
You can press the menu button part of the split button by pressing Enter or Spacebar. There isn't a standard windows keystroke for pressing the standard button part of split button. Normally this isn't a problem, as the command executed by the standard button part is included in the commands on the menu. When this isn't the case you can press it using the Jaws cursor: press Insert + Numpad minus to route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, and then press Numpad Slash to press the left mouse button.
A check box is used for choosing whether a particular option or property is on or off. The check box is a small white square immediately to the left of the option. If the option is on, then there is a black tick mark in the box, and Jaws says checked. If the option is off, then Jaws says not checked. To change the state of the check box, press Spacebar.
There's an example of a check box in the Internet Options dialog in Internet Explorer 7, which can be opened from the Tools menu. On the Privacy page of this dialog, there's a Turn on Pop-up Blocker check box.
A combo box is used for selecting a single item from a list. Note that what Jaws calls a combo box is normally known as a drop-Down list box.
In its closed state it appears as a rectangle containing the selected item, and has a Down Arrow at the right hand end of the box. In its open state, the list appears below the current selection. You don't need to open a combo box to change the selection. However, if you're using a screen magnifier as well as a screen reader, and want to see the list, then the keystrokes F4, Alt + Up Arrow, and Alt + Down Arrow, all open or close the list. In addition, if you Tab to the next control, this also closes a combo box if it's open.
You can change the selection using the keystrokes described in the Selecting single items in lists section: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, End, and the first character or characters of an item.
After you have changed the selection of a combo box in a dialog box, if you then want to press the default button by pressing Enter,it's recommended that you first Tab to the next control, as this also closes the combo box if it was open. After changing the selection of a combo box, as a user of a screen reader it's not always possible to know whether the combo box is open or closed, as sometimes they open when you change the selection, and they always open when you use their access key to move to them. Pressing Tab, ensures that the combo box is closed, and that your Enter doesn't get lost closing the combo box rather than pressing the default button.
An edit box is used for entering or editing text, and is also known as a text box. It's appearance is a rectangular area, which contains any text, and its label is either above or to the left of the box.
An edit combo box allows the user either to select a single item from a list, or to type in a choice which isn't on the list. Note that what Jaws calls an edit combo box is normally called just a combo box.
An edit combo box is a combination of an edit box and either a combo box or a list box. If it's an edit box combined with combo box, then its appearance is the same as a combo box, and the list of items is normally hidden. In contrast, when an edit box is combined with a list box, then the list box appears under the edit box, and always displays some of the list. The keystrokes for interacting with the two forms of edit combo box are the same. If you're using a screen magnifier as well as a screen reader, then the keystrokes for opening and closing the drop-down list of the combined edit box and combo box are the same as those for a combo box.
To change the selection:
There are some important differences when making a selection in an edit combo box, compared with a combo box:
After you have changed the selection of an edit combo box in a dialog box, if you then want to press the default button by pressing Enter,it's recommended that you first Tab to the next control which also closes any drop-down list box if it was open. This is discussed in more detail at the end of the Combo box section.
An edit spin box allows the user to either type in a value, or move through (spin through) a set of ascending or descending values. It consists of an edit box with the addition of a pair of up and down buttons at the right hand end. To move through the supplied set of values, use Up Arrow and Down Arrow.
You can find examples of edit spin boxes in the Internet Options dialog of Internet Explorer 7. Open this dialog from the Tools menu, and then press the Browsing History Settings button, which opens the Temporary Files and History Settings dialog. Here there are two edit spin boxes: one to set the disk space to use for temporary internet files, and the other to set the number of days to keep pages in history.
A List box can be used for selecting either a single item or multiple items from a list. In the latter case, any number of items may be selected, including none.
Its appearance is a rectangular box which contains a list of items arranged vertically, and it can have a vertical scroll bar if there are a large number of items in the list.
List boxes aren't used very often, but there's an example in the Jaws list of notification icons dialog box(Insert + F11.
You can select a single item using the keystrokes: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, End, and the first character or characters of an item. These keystrokes are described in detail in the Selecting single items in lists section.
The keystrokes for selecting multiple items in list boxes which support this are described in the Selecting multiple items in lists section.
A List view has much greater functionality than a List box, and is used for:
List views are common, and examples of list views are the Message list in Outlook Express, and the Folder view in Windows Explorer. Both of these list views support the selection of multiple items.
This section describes the selection of items in standard list views – the selection of items in a check box list view is described in the check box list view section below.
When you first move to some list views, for example the Folder view in Windows Explorer, the first item is the focus, but it's not selected — Jaws says “not selected” followed by the name of the item. If you need to select that item, you can do so by pressing Spacebar.
You can select a single item using the keystrokes: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, End, and the first character or characters of an item. These keystrokes are described in detail in the Selecting single items in lists section.
The keystrokes for selecting multiple items in list views which support this are described in the Selecting multiple items in lists section.
A list view often has a choice of views, such as tiles, icons, list and details. Keyboard navigation is much easier for the List and Details views than for the other views. For the List and Details views, you can navigate to all the items using the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys, whereas in the other views you often have to use the Left Arrow and Right Arrow keys as well.
The List view displays only the item's name, but The Details view displays other information about each item, as well as its name. The information is laid out as a table: each row describes an item, and the first column in the item's name. In addition:
A check box list view is used when the most common usage is for multiple items to be selected. Each item in the list is a check box which can be either checked or unchecked. A Jaws user can tell that it's a check box list view, because when Jaws reads any of the list items it ends with either checked or not checked.
You can select a check box using the standard keystrokes for selecting single items in lists. You can then use Spacebar to change the state of the check box from unchecked to checked or checked to unchecked.
An example of a check box list view can be found in the Choose Details dialog box in Windows Explorer, which can be opened from the View menu. This enables you to select which details you want displayed in a details view of the Folder view.
A group of radio buttons is used for choosing a single option from a small number of options. Radio buttons get their name from the group of buttons on some radios which is used for selecting a preset station.
The options are normally arranged in a vertical list, and to the Left of each option there's a button. These buttons appear as small white discs, and the button of the selected option has a black dot in the centre.
When you move to a group of radio buttons, the selected option is the focus. Jaws says the name of the group, followed by the name of the option, followed by “radio button”, followed by the word checked to indicate that it's the selected option, followed by the option's position in the list. To select the next or previous option, press Down Arrow or Up Arrow respectively. Normally you can cycle round the options using these keystrokes, so if you press Down Arrow when you're on the last option, this selects the first option.
There's an example of a group of radio buttons on the Folder Options dialog in Windows Explorer, and the dialog can be opened from the Tools menu. On the General page of this dialog, the first control is the Tasks group of radio buttons. The first option is “Show common tasks in folder”, and the second is “Use Windows classic folders. Note that in this example, you can't cycle round the options. Also, the next two controls on the page are also groups of radio buttons: Browse folders and Click items as follows.
A slider is used for setting a value of a quantity which has a continuous range, for example volume.
It looks like a ruler, with an Arrow to indicate the current value, and it can be oriented either horizontally or vertically: either a “left-right slider” or a “up-down slider”. The orientation is of no consequence, except if you you're using the Home and End keystrokes, as described below.
To change the value of a slider:
A tree view is used for selecting and interacting with objects which have a hierarchical relationship. A tree view can support either single or multiple selection, and in the latter case it's normally implemented as a check box tree view, as described in the check box tree view section below.
Before going on to describe a tree view and how to select items, the next two sections introduce some of the terms which are used to describe objects which have a hierarchical relationship.
Objects have a hierarchical relationship when some of the objects contain other objects, and these are known as container objects. The objects contained by a container object are often known as it's children, and the container object as the children's parent. A container object can contain container objects, which in turn can contain container objects, etc.
This sort of structure is often known as a tree, since in a tree branches have branches, which have branches etc, until you eventually reach the leaves. Because of this, the objects in a hierarchy which aren't containers are known as leaf objects.
The top level of a hierarchy consists of one or more objects. If some of these objects are container objects, then the objects they contain (their children) make up the next level down the hierarchy. If any of the objects in this level are container objects, then their children make up the next level down from this. This process can continue, and a particular hierarchy can have any number of levels.
The first example is folders and files on your computer, and which are shown in the tree view in Windows Explorer. A hierarchy arises because a folder can contain both files and other folders. The top of this hierarchy is the desktop folder, and the contents of this folder make up the next level down in the hierarchy: desktop shortcuts and the folders My Documents, My Computer, My Network places, and the Recycle bin. In turn, the files and folders contained in these latter folders make up the next level down in the hierarchy. For example, the My Documents folder contains files and folders such as My Music.
The second example is a web browsers history: the web pages which you've visited recently. Web browsers allow you different views of the history, and following describes the Date view in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and the Date and Site view in Firefox 3.
The top level of the hierarchy consists of date objects such as Today, Tuesday, and Two weeks ago. Each date object contains website objects for each of the websites visited in that period, and these make up the next level down in the hierarchy. Finally Each website contains the web pages which were visited on that website, and these make up the bottom level of the hierarchy.
A tree view of objects with a hierarchical relationship displays them as a hierarchical list. The list always contains the objects which are at the top level of the hierarchy. In addition, each container object can be either closed or open: if closed, then the objects children are not displayed; but if open, then its children appear immediately below the parent in the list.
The levels of the hierarchy are indicated visually by a parents children being indented with respect to the parent. Jaws uses level numbers to describe the hierarchy. The top level is level 0, and the lower levels are numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. When navigating a tree view, if you move to an object in a different level, then Jaws says the new level number.
In some tree views, only container objects are displayed. For example, in the tree view of your computer's file system in Windows Explorer, only disk drives and folders are shown. The leaf objects, that is the files, are only shown in the Folder view list view, which shows the contents of the object selected in the tree view.
To select an item in a tree view you can use all the standard keystrokes for lists: Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home, End, and the first character or characters of an item. These are described in more detail in the Selecting single items in lists section.
In addition to these keystrokes:
When you you select an item, or open or close a container object, Jaws gives you information about the size of the tree or your position in it:
A check box tree view is used when the most common usage is for multiple items to be selected. The container objects are often categories, and the leaf objects are check boxes, or occasionally radio buttons. A Jaws user can tell that it's a check box tree view, because when Jaws reads any of the leaf objects it ends with either On or Off.
You can select a check box using the standard keystrokes for selecting single items in lists. You can then use Spacebar to change the state of the check box from Off to On or On to Off.
An example of a check box tree view can be found in the Internet Options dialog box in Internet Explorer 7, which can be opened from the Tools menu. On the Advanced page of this dialog, there's a Settings tree view.
The following keystrokes can be used for selecting single items in list boxes, combo boxes, list views and tree views. All of the keystrokes both move the focus, and leave the item with the focus as the only selected item.
If you type a single character, then the selection moves to the next item in the list having this as its first character. Note that:
You can also use the first few characters of an item rather than just the first character. This is useful if there are several items in the list starting with the same character.
The following methods can be used in list boxes, list views, and tree views which support multiple selection.
You can select all the items by pressing Ctrl + A. This leaves the first item as the focus.
All the keystrokes for selecting items which are next to each other have the form Shift + navigation keystroke, where a navigation keystroke is a keystroke which changes which item is the focus. The possible navigation keystrokes are Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Home and End.
Starting with some item being the initial focus, if you press one or more navigation keystrokes on their own, then you'll end up with some item being the final focus. If you add Shift to all these keystrokes, then all the items between and including the item which is initial focus and the item which is the final focus are selected.
As you press these selection keystrokes, Jaws gives you a running commentary on the items being added or removed from the selection. If you need to check which items are selected, then you can press Shift + Insert + Down Arrow, which reads the selected items.
If multiple items are selected and you press any navigation keystroke on its own, then the multiple items are deselected, and only the item which is now the focus is selected.
For the following examples, assume that initially the third item in a list is the focus, and is the only item which is selected, then:
The keystrokes for selecting items which aren't next to each other all involve the Ctrl key:
Using the same example as above, where initially the third item in a list is the focus, and is the only item which is selected, then:
Note that if you want most of the items selected, apart from a small number, it's quicker to first select them all, and then unselect the ones you don't want. For example to select all but the third item, press Ctrl + A, which selects all the items and leaves the first item being the focus, and then press Ctrl + Down Arrow twice, and then Ctrl + Spacebar.