Reviewing Speech History.

JAWS Speech History enables you to review previous announcements spoken by JAWS. It is a very useful feature for reminding yourself of previously spoken messages, such as Windows notifications or the contents of a dialog box.

Ordinarily, Speech History can be brought into view by pressing JAWS Key+Space then H. It is rendered in the JAWS results viewer which is a separate application window, taking focus away from the application in which you were working. It can take a number of seconds for the results viewer to display the last 500 entries spoken by the synthesiser.

Leasey makes it possible for you to have access to your Speech History without leaving your currently focused application. You can move back and forth through the history items, review individual items and copy any number of them to the Windows clipboard.

The concept is as follows:

Press the Control and Grave Accent keys together then release them. We call this the History Key. Once you have done that, you are taken into a special history browse mode, whereupon a number of other keys can be pressed by themselves. These will be described in the paragraphs below.

Changing the History Voice.

As you scroll through your speech history items, you will hear them using a special voice which you can customise. You may like to adjust the voice so you can differentiate between those items in the Speech History and the speech JAWS uses to report on-screen activity. Press the History Key then:

Pressing the first of these keys raises the pitch of the voice while the second lowers the pitch. JAWS will speak some text using the newly selected pitch so you can hear what it sounds like.

As you use these keys, you will at some point reach the default pitch. This is referred to as "pitch 0". A sound will play and you will be advised this is the regular pitch.

When you have adjusted the pitch to your liking, press Escape to save. The setting will be saved even if you restart JAWS and is available on all machines if you use LeaseyCloud.

Using Speech History.

When the History Voice has been set, for day-to-day use you can press the History Key followed by either Up Arrow, Down Arrow, Left Arrow, Right Arrow, Shift+Left Arrow, Shift+Right Arrow or Space by themselves.

Let's go through the keys one by one.

History Key then Up Arrow, This captures the Speech History. You have to start with this one. Whenever you want to examine the Speech History entries, press this key combination. Anything which the speech synthesiser says subsequently is not part of your Speech History capture until you press this key combination again. JAWS announces the most recent entry. You may decide that is enough as you have reviewed the item spoken most recently, in which case, press Escape to exit out of history browse mode and continue on with your work in your current application.

From this point, assuming Speech History has been captured as described above, you are already in the Speech History layer. Press Left or Right Arrow keys by themselves. You'll probably want to start with Left Arrow repeatedly, which will take you back through the Speech History items one by one. JAWS will speak and Braille each item. The item will be spoken using the special history voice you have previously set. Because you are in the special history browse mode, you can quickly skim back and forth through the items to find the one you want. Press Escape to stop browsing.

Having heard a Speech History item, press Down Arrow. This will copy it to the clipboard. You can do this for as many segments as you like. Each one will be separated by a blank line on the clipboard. So if you want to copy the most recent, the third most recent, and the fifth most recent, you can do that.

If you wish to review an item in the JAWS Virtual Viewer you have heard, perhaps to check spelling, press Space. You have now left history browse mode and can continue to examine the text in the Virtual Viewer a character or word at a time.

Some points to note.

The Speech History you have captured will stay available to you until you restart JAWS or until you reset it by pressing History Key then Up Arrow. This means, if you wanted to, you could examine something from the Speech History, continue with your work, then go back to it in about an hour to remind yourself of important information which had previously been spoken. It should still be there. In that event, just press History Key then Left Arrow to enter the special history keyboard layer and start browsing with Left or Right Arrow keys by themselves.

Examples of Using Speech History.

  1. Browse your Inbox and Microsoft Outlook by moving through the messages with the Up and Down Arrow keys.
  2. You find a message from Mary Domingo and you would like to review the spelling of her last name which JAWS has just spoken together with the subject line of the message.
  3. Press History Key then Up Arrow to capture the Speech History.
  4. Press Left Arrow repeatedly until Mary's name is spoken.
  5. Press Space to review it word by word or character by character.
  6. Press Escape to exit the Virtual Viewer and return to Outlook.

Now we will move into the JAWS Help/About Dialog Box. We want to copy our JAWS serial number and the JAWS version number to the clipboard so as to send it to someone.

  1. Having moved into the About dialog box, press History Key then Up Arrow to capture the Speech History.
  2. The serial number was the last item spoken. Copy it to the clipboard with Down Arrow.
  3. Press Left Arrow repeatedly. Each time you do this, JAWS will announce the item previously spoken. Keep doing this until you hear the JAWS version and build number, then press Down Arrow to copy it. The version number is likely to be some way back, but because you only need to press Left Arrow by itself repeatedly, you can skim through the items quickly.
  4. When you reach the version number, press Down Arrow to copy it to the clipboard.
  5. Press Escape to exit history browsing mode.
  6. If you now press Leasey key then X to read the clipboard contents, you should hear the two items of information spoken.

Finally, you've just received a Windows notification. You were talking to someone at the time JAWS announced it, so you missed hearing the details.

  1. Press the History Key then Up Arrow to capture Speech History.
  2. JAWS announces the notification text because it was the last item spoken. Even that has enormous value. The keystroke used in JAWS by default to repeat the last spoken notification, JAWS Key+Space then Shift+N, does not obey any special Notification Manager rules you have set up, so you are going to get the notification in full including plenty of verbal clutter. Using the method just demonstrated here, you will just have the notification repeated including any special condensing of speech which may have been applied by a notification rule.
  3. But it gets better. You can now press Space to review that text which is presented in the form you would like it to be. The only way in which you could review that notification in native JAWS is either by going into Speech History or the Notifications Manager which are both separate applications. Even then, the Notifications Manager will not allow you to review that text using your preferences.

Copying Items in a Continuous Range.

There is a possibility that you may like to copy items from the speech history in a continuous range. Here is an example of how you might like to go about that.

  1. Press the History Key then Up Arrow to capture the speech history.
  2. Press Left Arrow repeatedly until you reach the first segment you would like to copy.
  3. Press Shift+Right Arrow. JAWS reports the segment of speech history has been copied to the clipboard.
  4. Continue to press Shift+Right Arrow. Each time you do this, the next segment of speech history is automatically copied to the clipboard. JAWS will always inform you of this while speaking the copied segment so you can monitor your progress. It's like selecting one character at a time.
  5. If you press Shift+Right Arrow too many times, you can move back by pressing Shift+Left Arrow. Each time you do that, the last copied segment is removed from the clipboard. Again, JAWS advises you which segment is no longer on the clipboard. It's like unselecting a character.
  6. When all required segments have been copied, press Escape to stop browsing.

Final Note.

There is a further method of accessing Speech History which is an alternative method if the conventional keystroke of JAWS Key+Space then H is not giving you what you need. You can press the History Key followed by letter H. When you press this key combination, a sound will play, letting you know that the Speech History is available. Focus is placed on the final entry, so press Up Arrow to explore previous Speech History entries.

To exit out of Speech History, press Escape. Back to Help Index.