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moderated Re: Font changes, etc. setting

Brian Vogel
 

Vaughn,

           What follows is both lecture and attempt to help, and the lecture is a part of that attempt.

           From what you've written, I am guessing that you may have recently gone blind and be very new to JAWS or any screen reader.  I have some "rules" you need to follow that will make your life much, much easier when dealing with all things computer related under Windows 10, or any operating system really.

Rule 1.  When you are trying to get a specific thing to occur, particularly if uncertain, take the time to think about what should be controlling that specific thing.  You gave an excellent example, getting Word Count or determining the font currently in use.   There will be three levels that will always be involved for you to think about, but only one of the three is going to be responsible for "the thing" no matter what it is.
                     a) Windows 10
                     b) Your Screen Reader
                     c) Your application program (word processor, web browser, software updater utility, etc., etc., etc.)

In this case, before I answer (and I'm sure you probably know it now), which of those three is most likely to handle the word count and font information:  the application program, in this case MS-Word.  So if you're looking for documentation regarding keyboard shortcuts to get this information, you'd want to do web searches on Microsoft Word Keyboard Shortcuts.  And Microsoft is great about documenting keyboard shortcuts for every program it produces in detail.  Click through on this link for a DuckDuckGo.com web search on MS-Word Keyboard Shortcuts and I will be shocked if the first result for you isn't the same as it is for me:  

Keyboard shortcuts in Word - Office Support
along with a long list of third party "cheat sheets" on MS-Word keyboard shortcuts.  If you search that page on Font, the first thing you hit under the Formatting Characters section is for bringing up the Font Dialog with either one of these two shortcuts:  CTRL+D or CTRL+SHIFT+F.
A DuckDuckGo web search on "Word 2016" Word Count keyboard shortcut returns the following as its first result: 

Is there a keyboard shortcut for word count?

which has the magic shortcut: CTRL+SHIFT+G for bringing up the Word Count dialog.

Web searches for a specific program, the specific thing you're trying to do, and the phrase "keyboard shortcut" generally take you straight to documentation with exactly that in it.

Every screen reader has documentation regarding its own keyboard shortcuts, and that particular documentation is not only downloadable, but is generally available in the Help menu for your screen reader.  I'm not running JAWS on this machine and I don't remember the keyboard shortcut sequence to bring up the JAWS help menu, but I know they have something in it with regard to the screen reader keyboard shortcuts as I've brought up same many times when working with clients.  That document opens in your web browser and is quite a bit more comprehensive in what it gives you.

Essentially, if you know the thing you're trying to do is likely controlled by Windows 10, web searching on "Windows 10" plus what it is you're trying to do plus the phrase "keyboard shortcut" is likely to find it.  Substitute JAWS for Windows 10 when it's a screen reader function of JAWS, or the program name as appropriate when it's the application.  This is absolutely the fastest way to find this information independently when you're in a hurry.

Rule 2:  If you didn't find what you were looking for, review rule one and try one of the other "levels" to look at if you think you may have chosen the incorrect one the first time around.

Rule 3:  If Rule 1 and Rule 2 come up empty, ask here or elsewhere.

Because you say you are new to Windows 10, you may be interested in also joining the Windows 10 for Screen Reader Users group:

and/or the Microsoft Office Accessibility Discussion Group:

--

Brian - Windows 10 Pro, 64-Bit, Version 2004, Build 19041  

The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it.
       ~ Lawrence Krauss
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