Tom, This makes good sense to me, and to be clear, you know much more about this than I do. Thanks for sharing this information.
Best regards, Steve Jacobson -----Original Message----- From: Talk [mailto:talk-bounces+steve.jacobson=visi....@lists.window-eyes.com] On Behalf Of Tom Kingston via Talk Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2017 10:33 AM To: Steve Jacobson via Talk <talk@lists.window-eyes.com> Cc: Tom Kingston <tom.kings...@charter.net> Subject: Re: A little tech tip on Windows and screen readers. Steve, I agree that the complicated route isn't the one to take. And I agree that programs would only check the flag on launch. But in the way I'm looking at this that's fine. If the flag gets set to false after shutting down a second screen reader and the first one is working fine I won't have to relaunch programs. And if I run the program to reset the flag after closing the second screen reader it will be true for any programs I launch thereafter. So the trick would be to run the program as soon as we shut down the second screen reader, which is what I would do because otherwise I'll forget. And after resetting the flag I can broadcast a system message that the flag was changed. So all those wild little party animal programs will be notified. Regards, Tom On 11/8/2017 10:37 AM, Steve Jacobson via Talk wrote: > Tom, > > Given my tendency to believe that the more complex something is, the more > likely it will cause problems, I think it might be useful to be able to > simply reset the screen reader flag upon demand as you suggest. While I > don't see any flaws in your logic, I would caution that there could be > applications that only check the screen reader flag when they start. In > other words, resetting the flag to true might not solve all problems. One > would assume that the operating system would know the flag was reset, and > that might resolve most of the problems that would arise, though. I have no > knowledge of how that flag is checked so this is all speculation which is > also dangerous. > > Thanks for this information. > > Best regards, > > Steve Jacobson > > -----Original Message----- > From: Talk > [mailto:talk-bounces+steve.jacobson=visi....@lists.window-eyes.com] On > Behalf Of Tom Kingston via Talk > Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2017 8:52 AM > To: Olusegun -- Victory Associates LTD, Inc. via Talk > <talk@lists.window-eyes.com> > Cc: Tom Kingston <tom.kings...@charter.net> > Subject: Re: A little tech tip on Windows and screen readers. > > Olusegun, > > John is right. The program I wrote was just to confirm the problem. But > I read your message a while ago and have been pondering it while > luxuriating in Peet's coffee. That's my latest low-tech discovery. > Highly recommended. (smile) > > WARNING! If you don't want to geek freak out close this message now! > Three ... two ... one ... lift off! > > Solving the screen reader flag problem programmatically is possible, but > not very practical. A program that would take care of it automatically > would need to be loaded at startup, wait a little while, and check to > see if the flag is true. Then it would know your screen reader is > running. (No assumptions is the golden rule in programming.) If so it > would then have to begin a process loop. Here's what that loop would > have to do. > 1. Enumerate all the running processes to see if a screen reader is > loaded. I might be able to query for Window-Eyes, NVDA, and JAWS > individually. > 2. Get the screen reader flag status and see if it's false. > 3. If both conditions are true then reset the flag to true. > 4. Put the program to sleep for whatever time is determined to be > reasonable for how often the check is performed so it doesn't bog down > the system but doesn't wait too long before resetting the flag. > 5. Iterate the loop and repeat the above steps. This is done > automatically but it is a process nonetheless. > > Checking the flag is a simple function, but building a construct with > all running processes isn't exactly a small task. It's more or less a > slimmed down shell of the Windows task manager without a UI. So I gave > this idea a thumbs down. > > Then a more practical approach came to mind. It would be a program you > could run to see if the screen reader flag is true and prompt you to > enable it if not. Yeah ... but, I thought, this really gets back to the > original solution of remembering to reload your screen reader because > you'd have to remember to run the program. But wait! I thought. It would > be beneficial because reloading our screen readers while some programs > are running requires us to close and reload the program due to the > preparations our screen reader does for that program when it loads. For > example, when I'm in my programming developer writing a program I cannot > reload NVDA. It cannot see the caret when I do so. It has to find it > when the program launches. And I've had to close and reload other > programs after reloading my screen reader because some things stop > working. Again, screen readers sometimes have to see the program launch > in order to work properly with them. Seeing the window come into focus > isn't always enough. > > So, provided that our screen reader has recovered to a fully functional > state after having to load another screen reader to get there this would > eliminate the need to reload it to reset the screen reader flag. > > Let me know if anyone sees any flaws in my logic. > > Regards, > Tom > > On 11/7/2017 10:19 PM, Olusegun -- Victory Associates LTD, Inc. via Talk > wrote: >> Tom, I like the geeky nature of your post. I thought you had mentioned > that >> you wrote a program to solve the problem. Is the program up for sale? If >> yes, how can I get it to snuggle up in my hands and at what cost? >> >> Thanks for sharing and for making me a bit more geekier than I deserve! >> >> Sincerely, >> Olusegun >> Denver, Colorado >> >> >> --- >> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. >> https://www.avast.com/antivirus >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the > author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. >> >> For membership options, visit > http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/tom.kingston%4 > 0charter.net. >> For subscription options, visit > http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com >> List archives can be found at > http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com >> > _______________________________________________ > Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author > and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. > > For membership options, visit > http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/steve.jacobson > %40visi.com. > For subscription options, visit > http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com > List archives can be found at > http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com > > > _______________________________________________ > Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. > > For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/tom.kingston%4 0charter.net. > For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com > List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com > _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/steve.jacobson %40visi.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
