Handy Tip For JAWS 7.0 and 8.0

Today on the Blind Tech Mailing List someone posted a tip which I think will be quite handy for a lot of people who are using JAWS 7.0 or 8.0. The tip does not work if you have a version of JAWS that is under 7.0.

If you press the insert key plus the windows key plus the F4 key combination, JAWS will shut down and close other processes that are asociated with it. This keystroke would be handy because as most of you may have experienced before, JAWS sometimes will not respond. For people who are just starting to use their computers, they will think of shutting down the computer and for those of us who are more experienced with the computer, we just go in to the task manager and shut down the process. There is a problem to that though. What if there is a process that also starts with the letter J besides the JAWS process? Well in either case, those two ways would take pretty long.

Now you are probably wondering how on earth you are going to access the keystroke. Well, there are several different ways to do it. The way I would do it is by using your left hand and hold the insert key and put your thumb on the windows key, and finally hit the F4 key with your index finger. The other way is by holding the insert key with your left hand, pressing the windows key with your thumb and use your middle finger to hit the F4 key.

Just as a reminder to all, this keystroke only works with JAWS 7.0 and 8.0. I hope you find this tip handy.