Screen-reading technology gives students without sight ability to read books, take tests

By Jonathan McFadden

mcfaddenj@thejohnsonian.com

Just like the average college student, senior business administration major Stephanie Maguras takes tests, writes papers, does homework and checks her e-mail regularly.

Unlike the average college student, she’s legally blind.

With a technology called JAWS (Job Access With Speech), reading has become a little easier for Maguras and other visually impaired individuals.

JAWS, a screen-reading software program that reads out text on a computer screen via an electronic voice, is available on many ACC lab computers throughout campus.

With JAWS, visually impaired students can read their e-mails, find information online, read textbooks if the publisher provides the book in a Word document format, write papers and even take tests.

Using JAWS

For Maguras, using JAWS is very helpful around test time.

Though she didn’t start using JAWS until high school, Maguras is able to listen to the electronic computerized voice at a quick pace.

“I use it to read pretty much everything,” Maguras said.

When she has to take tests, she goes to the test center in the Services for Students with Disabilities Office in Crawford. She said JAWS allows her to hear everything she is typing and was a convenience in pleasing one teacher who wanted to see everything Maguras wrote.

Using JAWS has been helpful in aiding Maguras exert her own independence, she said.

In her 13 years as Winthrop’s program director for students with disabilities, Gena Smith said she could not think of any student she has met with significantly impaired vision who wasn’t familiar with JAWS technology.

The software is only attached to an individual student’s user account, so they are able to access the program on any ACC computer on campus, Smith said.

It also allows for any settings students have adapted for their personal needs to remain intact, such as variation in the electronic voice or punctuation settings.

“Only the students who need it can access it,” Smith said.

JAWS, which Smith said is a very essential tool for visually impaired students and non-students, has been in use since its introduction in 1989.

While Smith does not provide JAWS for students’ personal use on their personal computers, she said many visually impaired students already come to college with it on their laptops.

Smith said the software was available at Winthrop before she came in 1997, but it wasn’t available on as many computers. 

It wasn’t until Smith and the Services for Students with Disabilities enacted a campus-wide deployment of JAWS that it was available on multiple ACC lab computers.

Once an acronym used to describe Job Access with Windows Systems, JAWS is now referred to as Job Access with Speech and is used on computers operating through Windows systems.

At Winthrop, JAWS currently operates on a five-user site license. Smith said the program doesn’t even have five users at the moment, though there have been times when there has been greater student need.

Smith, who also works with visually impaired people at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind, said she has met people who can listen to JAWS at such a speed that she herself is unable to understand what the electronic voice is dictating.

Students who have grown up using JAWS are also able to efficiently use the program, which allows its user to control the speed at which the electronic voice dictates.

“…I’m just not used to listening to the human voice—and it’s also an electronic voice—move that quickly,” Smith said.

Yet, as with much software, there are some bugs in the system, such as JAWS’s problem with reading anything that’s not text. 

“As visually appealing as everything’s gotten, JAWS likes text,” Smith said.

Smith said JAWS stumbles over pictures and has a problem reading complexities, similar to comprehensive graphs or charts.

Smith said she advises people who are preparing anything written for a visually impaired student to keep it as simple and text-heavy as possible.

While sighted students can utilize the look, point and click method to sift out needed or essential information, students using JAWS have to sit, listen and wait while JAWS goes through all the text on the screen—left to right, top to bottom.

Glitches in the system

JAWS users may also run into obstacles in getting their textbooks in a Word document format so they can be read. If a publisher does happen to offer the book for the computer, usually it is in a PDF file, Smith said.

JAWS and PDF files don’t get along too well.

“There are conversions you can do for a PDF but they are not as effective as reading a straight Word document,” Smith said.

Listening to JAWS can also be time-consuming, even for the more skilled listeners.

“…The amount of time it takes me to look and point and click is still so significantly less than the amount of time it takes to listen to all your steps,” Smith said.

If students are faced with an extensive menu or list of items to choose from, they are forced to listen to all the items to choose the one they want.

“There’s no point of reference,” Smith said. “All of that [lists, menus] has to be voice-guided.”

Still, Smith said JAWS provides more independence for its users when it comes to reading text.

“ [It’s] so much less time-consuming than having someone reading it to you,” Smith said.

JAWS has also made surfing the web easier.

Smith said websites, such as Winthrop’s homepage, have made their sites more accessible to screen-reading technology.

JAWS does require some training, which is provided by the South Carolina Commission for the Blind.

Mechanism of independence 

Marty McKenzie, principal of visual outreach services for the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind, has used JAWS for almost 13 years. When he started, he found it wasn’t so easy to learn.

“It was challenging for me,” McKenzie said.

McKenzie, who said he is a visual learner, began to lose a substantial amount of his vision over the span of his career.

While in graduate school, he used a magnifying glass to read print as his vision began to decline.

“Switching to an auditory format has been challenging,” McKenzie said.

Now, he has learned to appreciate 

the accessibility JAWS grants him. 

With JAWS, McKenzie can access his e-mail, navigate the Web and use Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook.

For McKenzie, one of the most important functions of JAWS is its ability to allow him to manage his personal finances using QuickBooks 2003.

“Being able to manage my own checkbook without having to involve anyone else’s help is extremely important for me,” McKenzie said.

JAWS allows McKenzie a level of independence he otherwise would not have, he said. McKenzie said one of the biggest bugs in the system he has run into is its incompatibility with other computer systems and applications. 

“One of the bugs right now is the slow response we get when we’re using the JAVA application,” McKenzie said.

JAWS prevents access to anything that may use JAVA. 

JAWS allows users to listen to punctuation. McKenzie said JAWS comes with four levels of  punctuation settings.

• All: reads every character that is not a number or letter.
• Most: reacts to common punctuation and leaves out anything that JAWS interprets as different or unusual.
• Some: reacts to all punctuation, but JAWS will only read punctuation that may be accidentally entered.
• None: does not read any punctuation, unless user is reading character by character.