Introduction

This tutorial is designed to give you a basic understanding of Window-Eyes and how Window-Eyes interacts with your operating system and applications. The following is some of what you will learn by listening to this tutorial; how to install your copy of Window-Eyes, the three voices of Window Eyes, and how to quickly adjust them to your personal taste.  If you have Window-Eyes, you will learn: what it can do for you, how to navigate the Windows desktop, how to use Windows Explorer to help manage your files, how to use Windows help, how to use the basics of Microsoft Word, how to browse the web with Internet Explorer and Firefox, how to manage your e-mail with Windows Mail, also known as Outlook express, how to read information relative to the cursor or insertion point, how to use your mouse to review the contents of the screen and basic Window Eyes commands to read important information, how to navigate the window eyes control panel and some of its common features, how to adjust the amount of speech, also known as verbosity, so as to fit your individual taste, how to install and use Window Eyes scripts. 
 
  This tutorial will not teach you everything about your operating system, your applications, or even Window Eyes, but it can be used as a quick way to get up and going and will help supplement your other learning materials.  There are several specialized tutorials which you may want to consider to help with the areas that are of most interest to you.  Please contact GW micro for the latest available tutorial and, of course, the Window Eyes manual and your other manuals should also be read for a complete list of features and functions.  Finally you may want to consider formal Window Eyes training from GW Micro.  If you are interested, please contact GW Micro for more details.  During this tutorial I will assume that you have a full-size keyboard, or if you are using a laptop, that you have a numpad connected.  There are keyboard layouts for laptop users, but this tutorial will not cover those keystrokes.  This tutorial is done in a very relaxed style.  It is suggested that you listen to it while in front of your machine so that you can follow along with the examples.  Feel free to stop the tutorial and experiment on your own.  The only true way to learn how to use Window Eyes is to actually use it.  It may seem overwhelming at first when you get your first computer, with your first operating system, with your first set of applications, with your first screen reader, but if you take it one step at a time and invest the necessary time, you can overcome the overwhelming amount of information in a relatively short period.  I'm currently using Microsoft Windows Vista, with many applications and utilities installed on my computer.  You'll most likely notice different results as you follow along since every system is slightly different.  You should not be concerned if things don't exactly match your case as you follow along.  It is more important that you understand the concept and not how it varies on your individual computer.  Please listen to this entire tutorial as many times as necessary.  Read the Window Eyes manual.  You may not understand everything and you certainly won't retain everything.  However, as you use Window Eyes more and more, things will start to make more sense.  You'll soon want to do certain tasks with Window Eyes and remember reading about that topic in the manual, but you can't remember the specifics.  Go back and read that section again to be amazed at how much more you get out of the manual this way.  

  Of course, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, or problems with Window Eyes, you can always contact your GW Micro reseller where Window Eyes was purchased from, or you can always contact GW Micro directly.  To contact GW Micro, you have the following options: telephone area code 2604893671 between eight and five Eastern standard Time; e-mail: if your comment doesn't require an immediate response or if it is after hours, you can send your comments via e-mail.  Simply send it to support, that's support@gwmicro.com.  Typically, you will get a response within one business day or sooner in many cases.  Visit our webpage at www.GWmicro.com.  There's a great deal of information on this page, especially in the support section.  Join the GW -- info list.  This list is only for GW Micro related questions.  When you post a message to this list, everyone else on the list can see it. GW Micro employees also monitor the list.  This is a great resource to give and it has a vast knowledge of individuals.  However, the traffic on this list can be large at times.  You can subscribe to GW -- info by going to www.gwmicro.com and selecting the support link along lines of GW -- info there is also the GW -- news list.  Only GW Micro employees can post to this list.  This is a perfect way if you simply want to know what is happening at GW Micro.  The traffic on this list is very low.  The computer used in this tutorial is a laptop using Intel dual core processor running at 2 GHz with two gig of RAM, using the Dec talk access 32 and the laptop's built-in soundcard.

*Note:  There are some formatting issues that you may want to know about before you get too far into these tutorials.  First, there will be two different voices typed out in the tutorials.  Those voices belong to Doug Geoffray, who is the human voice guiding you in the tutorial, and the Window Eyes synthesizer, which is the computer speaking to you.  To distinguish between the two, “WE” has been inserted before each time Window Eyes talks.  All other text is the voice of Doug.  Here is an example of what you will run into during this tutorial:

I’m inside WordPad with no document.  I’m in the document area, and I could start typing if I choose to.  But I’m going to bring in section 1 of the Window Eyes manual so that we can show you how to read relative to the cursor.  I’m going to bring up the WordPad file menu by pressing alt-f.
WE:  F, file f pulldown
And I’m going to hit “o” for open.  
WE:  O, Menu closed.  (silenced)
This brought me to the “open” dialog.  I could have pressed control-o to go directly to the open dialog.  I’m going to type in the entire path that we learned earlier in Windows Explorer:  c:/program files/gw micro/window-eyes/manual and hit enter.  Now if you have auto complete on, suggestions will come up as you type in more letters.  If you want to take a look at what is here, you need to back tab twice.  So, go ahead and hit shift-tab twice. 
In that example, the first paragraph was Doug speaking, then there was a blank line.  The next line began with “WE,” so that was Window Eyes speaking.  Then there was a blank line again, and then a sentence spoken by Doug.  That was followed by a blank line, and then a line spoken by Window Eyes.  That was followed by another blank line, and finally, another paragraph spoken by Doug.
It should also be noted that in the second Window Eyes paragraph, (silenced) appeared at the end of the text.  There are instances where Window Eyes will talk for longer than is necessary in this tutorial, so Doug has silenced it by pressing the control key.  So anytime that you see “(silenced),” that means that Doug has just pressed the control key to silence Window Eyes and has moved on.  (silenced) has not been spoken by Window Eyes.  I hope that this keeps you from getting confused while reading this tutorial.