If you want to assign to Window-Eyes a combination keystroke that your application program uses, you can do so without causing a conflict. You just have to use the Window-Eyes Bypass hot key (INS-B). Pressing this key tells Window-Eyes to ignore your next keystroke, even if it happens to be a Window-Eyes hot key. For example, let us say you want CTRL-C to be the hot key for voicing the current character, but your application program uses that key as its block copy key, a Windows convention. Go ahead and assign it as the Window-Eyes hot key, and when you want to use it to copy a block of text, just press INS-B before you press CTRL-C.

You could find some other key to use to read the current character or even relocate the copy key if your application program lets you do this. But it would probably be a better idea to acquire the bypass habit from the beginning, even if this seems somewhat annoying at first. By using the Bypass hot key, you leave every key available as a hot key and can feel free to assign as many hot keys as you would like. Trying to avoid bypassing by continually looking for unused application-program keys to assign as hot keys gives you much more to memorize since you may quickly run out of mnemonics.

On the other hand, the Windows operating system, and especially the 104-key keyboard, allow many more combination keystrokes to be defined.