Nicole, Thanks. This may sound like backpedaling but it really isn't, but I seldom do something like that with someone who is congenitally blind, except to tell them how they'd get someone who's sighted and assisting them to know where to look. I tend to, with all my clients, actually, start out with an instruction like, "Use INS+F7 to list the links on the page," or, "Use INS+F6 to list the headings on the page," prior to giving any other instruction or feedback, if I give any at all. Since I'm teaching JAWS in the moment the JAWS terminology definitely comes absolutely to the fore because it must.
I teach, for instance, that when using Windows Explorer or File Explorer that JAWS routinely opens a folder and places you on the first item in the folder, but for some reason it does not (and never has, in my experience) select that first item, so if that's the one you want to operate on you must hit the spacebar to select it first but that if you arrow up or down the thing that you've landed on is actually already selected. I then make the point that if someone ever says "click on" file X they're telling you to select it or to "double click" they mean to open it/activate it, as the case may be. As I think about it, I probably use screen layout information very seldom as a part of teaching how to do something, but fairly frequently in just mentioning where the thing that is being worked on is located. I guess that's because I literally work with the latter method of orientation and know that others will, when trying to help, too. I never use "mouse references" like, "hover over object X," but will use right and left click references because they're sometimes precisely what one must do, using either the mouse pad left/right click buttons on a laptop if one prefers, or the JAWS equivalent, NumPad slash for left click, and NumPad Star (or asterisk or multiply) for right click. I have, but very rarely, done a "turn off the monitor" exercise because I find it so frustrating. I realize that if I did this more frequently I would develop at least some further proficiency with actual functional use of screen readers. Like most people, though, I fall back on what's easiest for me and that's frequently because time is of the essence. I really appreciate the feedback and insight. Brian
