Email Guide

A guide for Jaws users, written by Chorlton Workshop for hsbp. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.

Email addresses

The format of an email address is something@somethingelse, and it's entirely lower case. Each email address is unique and is allocated by the supplier of your email account.

Components of an email

• The To field. One or more email addresses you want to send the email to.
• The Cc field. This stands for carbon copy, and the email is also sent to any addresses in this field.
• The Bcc field. This stands for blind carbon copy. As with Cc, the email is also sent to the addresses in this field, but the addresses in this field cannot be seen in any of the emails that are received.
• Subject field. A meaningful title for the message.
• The message.
• Attachments. One or more files can be attached to an email and are known as attachments. These are often Word documents, PDFs or pictures, but can be other types of file.

Note that if you want to send an email to a large number of people and do not want everybody's email address to appear all the received emails, then put all the email addresses in the Bcc field, rather than the To field.

Accessing email

You can access an email account using either an email program or a website.

Email programs

Email programs are also known as email clients, and they include:

• Outlook Express, which comes with Windows XP.
• Outlook, which is part of Microsoft Office.
• Windows Mail, which comes with Windows Vista.
• Windows Live Mail. The 2011 version only runs on Windows Vista and Windows 7, but the 2009 version also runs on Windows XP.
• Mozilla Thunderbird, which runs on all versions of Windows.

The following separate guides are available:

• Outlook Express guide
• Windows Mail guide
• Windows Live Mail 2011 guide

Websites

For users of screen readers, using a website to access email is more complex than using an email program, and so takes longer to learn.

Suppliers of email accounts

You can get a free email account from either your Internet Service Provider (ISP), or from the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft whose email accounts are called Gmail (Google Mail), Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail respectively.

Email accounts from ISPs

• You normally access your account using an email program such as Outlook Express.
• Your emails are stored on your computer, and so these stored emails aren't accessible from other computers.
• Most ISPs also provide a website to access your account which you can use if you're away from home. This allows you to send emails and read any emails with haven't already been downloaded by your email program at home.

Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail

• The account provider can store all your messages.
• You can access your email using a website, and this gives you access to all your messages from any computer connected to the internet.
• You can also access your email using an email program. If you want to have this type of access, then the advantage of a Gmail account is that both access using an email program is free, and you can use any email program.

Using the Gmail website is described in a separate Gmail guide.