The method I use to turn off the touchpad on my HP is, I believe, available
regardless of what brand of laptop you have, but I could be wrong. The
process I use is completely accessible to JAWS.
The steps below are for Windows 7 pro edition.
1. Press the windows search key, and enter "mouse " (without the quotes)
into the search box and press enter.
This takes me to the "mouse properties", which I assume is buried down
somewhere in the control panel, and I have no idea how to get to that
section other than as described above.
2. In the mouse properties screen, there are several menu tabs, starting on
my computer with the "buttons" tab. Go to the tab on the far right, "device
settings". The first thing you come to is a box that lists all the
available devices that it considers a mouse. On mine, the touchpad shows up
as the only one. If you have more than one showing, use the up/down arrow
key to select the touchpad. Press tab once, and you will be on the button
you have been seeking. That button should say "disable". Press on that
button, and it should then say "enable", because it has just turned off the
mouse pad. On my computer, there is also a plop or blurp sound which is the
same one I get when I plug in any USB device, or when I insert an SD card
into the laptop's slot. Tab to the "apply" button, then the "OK" button.
That closes the dialog box.
To turn the touchpad on, just repeat the above steps, changing that button’s
state from “disabled” to “enable.”
I suspect the reason that a function key command does not keep the touchpad
off is that Windows assumes you just want to disable the touchpad
temporarily, so it re-sets the mouse pad “enable button upon re-boot.
Windows makes it harder to make that change "permanent" so that folks don't
get stuck with having no mouse at all.
Tim Ford
-----Original Message-----
From: Arianna Calesso
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 5:42 PM
To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com
Subject: [JAWS-Users] Disabling the mousepad on a Dell laptop
Does anyone know of a keystroke to disable or shut down the mousepad on a
Dell laptop? I don't even have to touch the thing for it to make the cursor
jump away from the application I'm working in. I've tried Device Manager
and there was no disable button or else JAWS couldn't read it.
Thanks for any help.
Arianna
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