JAWS Tips: Audio Ducking, Quick Restarts, and Layered Keystrokes - podcast episode cover

JAWS Tips: Audio Ducking, Quick Restarts, and Layered Keystrokes

Jan 11, 20255 min
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Episode description

Show Notes

In this week’s Unmute Presents, we’re diving into some JAWS tips that can make your life a little easier. Whether you’re adjusting audio levels or restarting JAWS on the fly, these keystrokes are practical and simple to learn.

What’s in This Episode:

  • Audio Ducking: Ever miss a JAWS message because it blended with your music or audiobook? Learn how to use a quick keystroke to turn on audio ducking and ensure JAWS gets the spotlight when it speaks.
  • Restart JAWS Faster: Forget manually shutting down and restarting—there’s a keystroke for that!
  • Layered Keystrokes: Curious about what else JAWS can do? We’ll show you how to explore layered keystrokes to unlock even more functionality.

Keystrokes Covered:

  • Audio Ducking On/Off: JAWS Key + Space, then D
  • Restart JAWS: JAWS Key + Space, then F4
  • Help for Layers: JAWS Key + Space, then ?

Got a specific layered function you want us to cover next? Shoot us an email at feedback@unmute.show.

At Your Fingertips: Braille Then and Now

Every first Thursday of the month, Chris explores Braille and its evolving technology in the At Your Fingertips series. If you missed this month’s episode, head to the Unmute Presents podcast feed or visit Unmute.show to catch up.

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Transcript

On the first Thursday of every month in the Unmute Presents podcast feed, you can hear Chris talk about Braille and the technology used with Braille then and now. This show's at your fingertips and you can get it by subscribing to the Unmute Presents podcast feed. Make sure that you're subscribed or head on over to Unmute show to search out old episodes.

Hey everybody, in this week's Jaws tip, I'd like to tell you about two Jaws layered keystrokes that I've found to be very useful to me. If you haven't heard about them before, or maybe you have heard about them and haven't actually tried them, I'd love you to give them a try. After you listen to this, you might use this first keystroke if you're listening, let's say, to some music or an audiobook, and Jaws speaks out a message that you didn't understand because the Jaws voice blended in with what you were playing. Now, if you're a voiceover user, you already know that VEO has something called audio ducking, which when it's activated, it will lower the volume of what you're listening to long enough for you to hear what VEO has to say. Then it brings the volume back up after it's through with the message. Did you know that Jaws now also has this audio ducking feature? To turn it on, what you would do is press jaws key +space then D as in delta. Jaws will respond with Duck other audio. If you then press Jaws key plus space and then D a second time, Jaws will say do not duck other audio. And that will mean that the audio ducking feature will be turned back off. So now you're thinking, oh boy, this audio ducking thing is something I'd love to have. And that's very easily accomplished. All you have to do is go to the default Settings file in the Jaws Settings center and in users go down until you hear a checkbox that says Lower audio volume of programs while Jaws is speaking. If you check that checkbox, that'll turn off audio ducking all the time. Just remember, though, you got to hit the Enter key in order to save the change. For my second keystroke, I'd use this one. If you wanted to quickly restart Jaws with a single keystroke, rather than manually shutting it down and then manually starting it up again, that keystroke is JAWS key plus space then F4. On a fast computer, this restart takes maybe 10 or 15 seconds, but it might take a little bit longer if you're on a laptop or a slower computer, don't panic. It will happen. It works all the time for me. That's it for this session. But before I go, I wanted to remind you that these two keystrokes I just talked to you about are part of an ever increasing amount of things that you can do through this JAWS layer idea. And once again, the way that you start getting into it is by pressing JAWS key plus space. You'll hear a little click when you have done that. If you then want to learn about all of the different options that are available in this layer, you would type a question mark. So the keystrokes again would be JAWS key plus space, then a question and press Enter. What'll happen is that you will get a virtual screen that you can use up and down arrows to navigate on, and that will list all of the major functions that you can perform within the JAWS layer and the letter that you type to get to it. So then let's say you find an option that you want. Let's say tables. If you want to learn more about that function, what you would do is, is you do JAWS key plus space, then followed by the letter of the function you want. Let's say it's T for tables, and then type a question mark and press Enter. What will happen is you'll get a screen similar to what came up when you ask for help on all the functions, and that will tell you about all the different things you can do in the tables area. In future podcasts, we could go into more detail about some of these layered functions. And so if there's any that you might particularly be interested in learning about, please don't hesitate to shoot us an email. Feedbacknmute show thanks everybody and have a really great day.

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