To continue listening, press the play key, which is zero on the numeric keypad.
Stop is Enter; play is zero.
If you are using a screen reader and its keys or speech are interfering with Home Page Reader, shut down your screen reader, and continue reading this document. The sixth section below has a link to a web site that gives techniques for using Home Page Reader with specific screen readers.
All but a few HPR keys are on the numeric keypad. When you need a sequence of keys, like the sequence of the plus key followed by the 4 key, we will just say, "plus then 4." This means press plus on the numeric pad and then press 4. Plus then 4 is play from the top. Some HPR keys are chords, such as "Enter with 6." "Enter with 6" means press Enter on the numeric pad, hold it, and then press 6. Enter with six, by the way, is search again, which is discussed later.
Basic navigation is by item or word. Previous, current and next item keys are 4, 5, and 6. If you press the current item key now, you will hear this paragraph again. Previous item, 4, reads the previous paragraph. Try it. The item keys read paragraphs in documents like this one. Items can be smaller chunks of information than paragraphs, such as a list item or a button.
You can step through everything in any web page by going one item at a time, with the 6 key.
We abbreviate previous, current, and next, with PCN. The PCN item keys are 4, 5, and 6. Try 7, 8, and 9. These are PCN word keys.
When you precede a key with plus, that takes a related action. Press plus then 4, the extended previous item, to go to the top and start reading. Try it. When you press plus then 6, HPR goes to the bottom of the page.
When you fast forward through a site, you will hear a couple of words starting sentences or items spoken at normal speed. To fast forward, press plus then zero, but hold the zero key until you want fast forwarding to stop. Release the 0 key, and HPR will read again at normal speed.
When you read by item or word, you may want to hear punctuation spoken. To change the speaking voice to include punctuation, press plus then asterisk.
Let's review what you have learned so far. Enter is stop; zero is play. 4, 5, and 6 read the PCN item or paragraph. 7, 8, and 9 read the PCN word. Press plus then 4 to read from the top. Press plus then 6 to go to the last item. To fast forward, press plus then hold zero. To hear punctuation, press plus then asterisk.
The table of contents is at the end of this document. The Keys list is right before the table of the contents. In the next section you will find a quick path to the keys list.
To open or follow a link, double click the 2 key. The current link key is 2; double click 2 to follow that link.
Try some links for practice. These local links take you to the previous sections that you have already read: link 1 goes to Basics, link 2 goes to Organization, and link 3 goes to Links.
To hear the status of a connection, press dot then Enter. If a connection is not in process, the time is announced with dot then Enter.
Press plus then 1 or 3 to go to the first or last link respectively. The first link in this document is the link to the table of contents.
In this document, press plus then 3 to go to the last link in the table of contents. The last link is for the quick keys list, which is the next to last section of the document. Double click 2 when you are on the last link and you will start reading the keys list. To return to this paragraph, press plus then 1, then press the 6 key 7 times.
We use the word "link" in HPR to mean any active element on a web page, including form elements. All active elements are spoken in a female voice.
Text entry fields are announced as "text" or "text area" in a female voice. When you want to enter text, double click 2 on the text entry field and an input dialog will be opened. Type the text and press Enter. The text entry field will be repeated with the new contents.
Other form elements are radio buttons, select menus, check boxes and push buttons. To change the state or activate any of these, just double click 2.
When Home Page Reader encounters a map or a select menu, it announces the number of items in the map or menu and then skips to the end of it. You don't have to listen to long lists of links. If you want to hear the individual links, press stop and use the PCN link keys, 1, 2, and 3. Use the zero key to continue.
The bookmarks page has a list of web sites organized in folders. You will be able to add sites to the bookmarks and organize your bookmarks. Bring up the bookmarks with the bookmark key, minus. Remember, to return here use the history key, Num Lock.
Bookmarks are organized by folders, which are groups of related bookmarks. When you are looking at the bookmark page, use the word keys (7, 8, and 9) to read the PCN folder. Then use the item or link keys to hear the bookmarks.
When looking at the bookmarks page, use the extended bookmark key, plus then minus, to delete the current bookmark. If the current page is not the bookmark page, plus then minus adds the current page to the bookmarks. The new bookmark is added at the end of the bookmarks page.
You can explore all the pages in your history list, and when you find the one you want, open it. Press Num Lock with your forefinger, and hold it down. Then with your middle and ring fingers, press slash and asterisk, the keys right next to Num Lock. Pressing slash and asterisk will move you forward and backward in the history list. When you find the page you want, let go of both keys and the page will load.
Go to bookmarks with the minus key. Navigate the bookmarks with the item keys, 4, 5, and 6 or the link keys, 1, 2, and 3. Navigate the folders with 7, 8, and 9. Add or delete a page with plus then minus. Return to the previous page with Num Lock. Use Num Lock with slash or asterisk to move backwards and forwards in the history list.
When you try to load a page and it isn't working, press plus then Enter to cancel the request.
At any time you can bring up that text entry dialog and type in a web address, a URL. Also, you can use this text entry dialog to find a word or word string in the current page. Type a slash, then a string, and press Enter to initiate a search in the current page.
After you have searched for a string, you can continue searching for the current search string by pressing the chord Enter with 4 or Enter with 6 to search backwards and forwards, respectively. Enter with 5 speaks the current search string.
If you just type a string in the text entry dialog with no slash, HPR sends this string to the default search engine, which searches the web for the string.
The text entry dialog can also be used to save web pages locally. Type greater than and a path and file name to save the file on your hard drive. When the extension is .htm or .html, the file is saved as an html file. If the extension is .txt, the file is saved as text. For example, if you enter >C:\temp\quickhelp.htm now, this document will be saved as a web document on your c drive in the directory temp.
If possible, you should have the screen reader sleeping when Home Page Reader is in the foreground, just as you would with other self-voicing applications. If this is not possible, then you may need to shut down your screen reader while you are using HPR. The disadvantage of this approach, besides its inconvenience, is that some web pages you read with Home Page Reader may bring up a Netscape dialog or plugin, which are not spoken by HPR. Your screen reader is needed to speak Netscape dialogs and plugins.
If you need more information on screen readers, go to the screen reader documentation on the IBM Special Needs Systems site.
For WhereAmI information, double click 5 or press plus then 5. The WhereAmI information tells you which link, page element or table you just heard. For page summary information, press dot then 5 and you will hear a description of the page.
As mentioned earlier, press dot then 1, 2, or 3 to hear the PCN heading.
Press dot then 4 or 6 to jump backward or forward 10 items, like page up and page down.
Press dot then 7, 8, or 9 to jump to the PCN structure. The structures are lists, maps, select menus, forms and tables rows. Jump structure keys take you to the beginning or end of whatever structure you are in. For example, the jump next structure key takes you to the end of the current select menu, to the next table row, or to whatever follows the ordered list.
Press dot then Num Lock, / or * to jump to the PCN table.
Press plus then 4 or 6 to move to the first or last cell of a table row when in table navigation. Press plus then 2 or 8 to go to the first or last cell in a column.
The most powerful part of table navigation is the ability to check the column and row headers, which are cells at the beginning of a column or row, while not losing your place. Enter with 4 and Enter with 8 speak the row and column headers, respectively.
If you hold down the Enter key and use the arrow keys (2, 4, 6, and 8) you can explore around the headers. When you let go of the Enter key, press the 5 key to hear that the current cell has not changed.
Following this paragraph is a table on which to practice. It is an imaginary
TV listing. Try to figure out the table using advanced table navigation.
| Network | 6:00 PM | 7:00 PM | 8:00 PM |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABC | I Love Lucy | World Cup Soccer | |
| CBS | News | Cosby | Roseanne |
| NBC | ER | Night Line | |
This table has correct HTML 4.0 accessible table markup. If you navigate to "night line" and press the WhereAmI key (plus then 5), you hear "nbc 8 pm," which are the row and column headers. You can get the same information with advanced table navigation.
Press the frame set key, dot then 0, to eliminate the NOFRAMES information and leave just the frame links. To go directly to any of these frames, double click 2. Alternatively, you can expand the frames in place by pressing the same dot then zero. This inline display can help you figure out which frames you want to open. If you know which frame to open, there is no need to expand the frames.
When you open a frame, it may be the table of contents. When you select a link in that frame and open it, a different frame may be opened transparently if the frames are coded properly.
When you want to open a different frame, press dot then 0 to go back to the frame set and then double click the frame link you desire. It is better to navigate through frames from the frame set, rather than using the history list.
When you want to leave a submenu or settings, press asterisk.
When in a submenu, the 2 and 8 keys work as they do in the main menu, moving up and down the menu choices. The 5 key gives the current setting and its value. If you want to change the value, use the 4 and 6 keys to cycle through values of the settings. Most submenus have an item called defaults. When defaults is selected with the 6 key, all settings of that submenu are returned to their default settings.
Here is a settings example. If you want this quick help page or any page you are looking at to be the startup page, press asterisk to enter the settings menu. Then press 2 four times to get to "miscellaneous settings," press 6 to go into the miscellaneous settings menu, press 2 twice to get to "startup page," then press 6 to set the startup page. Press 5 to confirm the setting. Press asterisk to exit miscellaneous settings. Press asterisk again to exit the settings menu.
If you want to save a bookmark at a specific place in the page, press dot then minus. This will save the URL and the line number to return to when the page is opened again.
To move a bookmark, locate the bookmark you want to move and check that you have it by pressing the 2 key. Then press and hold the minus key. Keep holding it and press the link keys (1, 2, or 3) or folder keys (7, 8, or 9) until you find where you want to move the bookmark. Press the 6 key to drop the bookmark after that place, or press 4 to drop it before that position. Release the minus key.
To rename the current bookmark or folder, press minus with dot to open the text entry. After typing the name you want, press Enter. To create a new folder, press minus with dot and precede the text with greater than.
If you have turned off synchronization in the miscellaneous settings menu, then use F11 to display HPR's current page in Netscape. Use F12 to display and speak Netscape's page in Home Page Reader. If you have synchronization on, these two keys should have no effect.