LeaseyBites: Recent Episodes
Hartgen Consultancy
Leasey is an Access Technology tool for blind people, used in conjunction with the JAWS for Windows screen-reader. This podcast contains short audio tutorials, with each episode devoted to a specific aspect of Leasey. Whether you are new to Leasey, are training someone in the use of it, or perhaps a seasoned user looking for a refresher, we hope you will find something useful.
We continue working with a cloud source to backup and restore our JAWS settings, In other words, those not related to Leasey, such as preferred speech synthesiser, dictionary files and more.
You now know the subject of this LeaseyBite. It is about working with the cloud. If you think this does not apply to you as you only use Leasey on one machine, think again. Listen up, and you might learn something to your advantage.
We continue our tour of the new features to come in the upcoming release of Leasey, looking at initial support for the Twitter web site and the Twitter app.
We continue our tour of the new features to come in the upcoming release of Leasey, looking at how we can abbreviate the announcements from Windows Notifications and application alerts, together with outlining some smaller but equally important new Leasey features.
We continue our tour of the new features to come in the upcoming release of Leasey, looking at support for Markdown.Markdown is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formattingelements to text documents.
We continue our tour of the new features to come in the upcoming release of Leasey, looking at the changes to news and weather.
We begin our tour of the new features to come in the upcoming release of Leasey, looking first at the changes to radio and podcasts.
The Leasey Start Menu serves two purposes. It allows you to access computing applications you may wish to frequently launch. But it also allows you toopen common utilities in Windows it may be more difficult to get access to. One could assume that such a feature is designed for computer beginners. However,we already know that experienced users of JAWS are benefiting from it.
If you are fond of typing a folder path into the Windows Run, Open or Save As dialog boxes, you could find yourself entering something which is quite lengthy.If the path to a folder location is reasonably difficult to get to, and you use it regularly, it would be good if you could save yourself some time inorder to save items there more quickly. A feature available in Leasey allows you to map folders to drive letters.
Probably a number of you will have heard of WhatsApp. It lets users make video and voice calls, send text messages, share their status and more with just a wifi connection.JAWS Support for the older WhatsApp client was made available last summer. We now support the new app or its beta equivalent.The app for the WhatsApp platform which you can download from the microsoft store is relatively accessible. It's not perfect but you can manage many things with it. But to be a super user of WhatsApp, the functionality built into our Leasey product, or the scripts available separately, go a long way to helping you get the most from it. In this audio demonstration, you will hear about many of the features you can enjoy.If you do not have our Leasey product, you can purchase the scripts from https://www.hartgen.org/whatsapp
Mastodon is a social network which has become popular in recent months. One of its attractions is that you can express yourself more fully, as some of the server providers allow you to send messages comprising thousands of characters. after all, if you have to condense a message into a small number of characters, this can lead to misunderstanding and frustration. But one problem can occur, and this relates to how to remember the different addresses of the people you would like to write to. Meet the Mastodon Address Book which can help. Available in Leasey version 8.
It is more than possible that you would like to work in one application while referring to notes in another one or within a series of applications. You may be writing a report in Microsoft Word, but you've made notes relating to a client which are stored in a text file which would typically be opened up in Notepad or another text editor. To get to those notes, you may have to press alt with tab a number of times to find it, especially if you have several applications open.alternatively, you may be a person who does quite a lot of audio recording, and you need to read text which you have compiled from a number of documents or web page sources. You would need to start the recording, and then press alt tab often several times in order to move to the web page or document of interest.a new feature in leasey version 8, called leasey virtual notes, makes referring to text a very easy process.
Spotify gives you millions of songs at your fingertips. The artists you love, the latest hits, and new discoveries just for you. It allows you to streamsongs over the internet and listen to them as if they were stored on your computer. Let us continue our journey to learn how to use Spotify to create and manage Playlists, share songs, listen to Song Radio and more.
Spotify gives you millions of songs at your fingertips. The artists you love, the latest hits, and new discoveries just for you. It allows you to stream songs over the internet and listen to them as if they were stored on your computer. Imagine being let loose in a music store with permission to play anything you want, old and new. You can play any song, any time! There are also hundreds of playlists other people have created to suit any mood or music genre. Find out how to use Spotify with Leasey!
The LeaseyRadio player makes it possible for you to listen to radio stations from around the world, provided they are broadcast on the internet. Thousands of radio stations exist playing a wide variety of music covering many genres. Speech content is also very popular for news, sport and discussion of current affairs. Find out how to hear them in this LeaseyBite.
Many of us enjoy listening to audio content, either music, books, podcasts or something else. No matter what it is, you will want a good audio player through which to hear it. This LeaseyBite demonstrates the support Leasey gives to VLC Media Player.
WhatsApp is a popular, free, multi-platform messaging app that lets users make video and voice calls, send text messages, share their status, and more with just a Wi-Fi connection. Part of what makes this app appealing is that it works on various phone and computer operating systems, so you can continue your conversation anytime, anywhere. Find out how to use it with Leasey!
As you read a book, document, web page or even an Email, you may like to be reminded of the importance of specific text contained within it in the future. Maybe you are browsing through your Email inbox, and you want to set a little note to remind yourself why you kept a particular message. If you are reading all the files in your music library, you may wish to attach a note to some of them to remind yourself that you would like to copy them elsewhere at a later date. These are just a few examples of the power of a LeaseySticky Note.
Using the internet is one of the best things in life, there's so much you can do. But sometimes, you need a reminder of good strategies for navigating the site itself. After all, the web is a very unpredictable place to be. This LeaseyBite demonstrates a feature which will give you some help.
This tutorial discusses Leasey Custom Help which allows you to create notes to help you when working with computing applications or environments. We all need a reminder from time to time as to how to work with a program. Perhaps you may care to create a list of shortcut keys you can use for it. Maybe you need to note some reminders as to the best ways of navigating it; quick shortcuts and tricks to assist you in doing things that little bit faster. You can make notes of them to be accessed wherever you are on the computer, or perhaps associate them with the application for which the notes are intended.
If you are training a Leasey or JAWS user, Custom Help is the ideal tool for you to create text notes for your student. You then have confidence that he or she can access the notes at any point in the future. You can even create them if you are away from
The LeaseyClock not only tells you the time! It contains very flexible stopwatch facilities as well as timer functions. It can also be set to play chimes at varying intervals which are controllable by you. Finally, you can even cause the minutes and seconds to be output to your Braille display regardless of the model of display you are using.
LeaseyTags is an intelligent application which allows you to manage files and folders within File Explorer. You can also tag messages in Microsoft Outlook for manipulation, described in this tutorial. For example, if you wanted to select files 1, 3 and 25 in a File Explorer list, perhaps for copying, cutting or deleting, this could be difficult. It can be done using the keyboard but there is the potential for mistakes to be made. LeaseyTags makes this and other similar functions simple!
Many people are creating text for blogs, web pages and HTML documents. But in order for the presentation to look visually appealing and to enable a high standard of navigation by screen-reading software, it is important to include HTML markup. This enables you to create text at specific Heading levels, bulleted or numbered lists or even insert tables and pictures. The HTML Assistant in Leasey, demonstrated in this LeaseyBite, can assist with this.
Have you ever been confronted with a situation where you've been to a website, and you always want to come back to the same place if it exists each time you visit it? In this LeaseyBite, meet LeaseyAlerts.
The LeaseyPoints facility is an extremely powerful tool which will dramatically assist you while working with your documents and when navigating web pages on the Internet. LeaseyPoints allow you to locate passages of text upon demand as demonstrated in this LeaseyBite.
Leasey provides you with a number of Emoji which can be used irrespective of the application in which you are working. A demonstration is given in this LeaseyBite.
In the past Using Microsoft Internet Explorer, locating sites you had previously stored as Favourites was an easy process. All such shortcuts used to be placed in a special folder for the purpose, which could be located from the Windows "Start Menu", or indeed a Shortcut pointing to the favourites folder could be placed on the Windows Desktop. Activating such a shortcut would take you into a list of all your Favourites which if necessary you could divide into separate sub-folders so as to group them into categories. Those days were a thing of the past, however as demonstrated in this LeaseyBite, we can bring back the magic.
Have you ever created a Microsoft Word document at your place of work and needed to save it in a specific folder which is located on a network drive several sub-folders deep? Is there a folder which you need to access regularly and you do not have the skills to create a Windows Shortcut on your desktop pointing to that folder? Have you created a document template which you need to access on a regular basis? Are there web sites you would like to access quickly but you don’t necessarily want to launch your preferred web browser to get there? These are all very typical examples of situations for which LeaseyCuts can be used, demonstrated in this LeaseyBite.
In this LeaseyBite, we explore a number of useful tools you can use in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook especially. These include spell checking, finding text, information and navigational keys, unprotecting documents, spreadsheets and presentations, creating Email messages, tasks and appointments globally, and much more.
LeaseyCast allows you to gain access to thousands of podcasts through Apple's directory. Find the description of a podcast, browse through episodes and stream or download them to your computer. We also discuss how to be notified of the latest LeaseyBite and download the files from within the Leasey interface.
The Leasey Currency Converter has been designed to help you to convert currencies in a number of different ways and it will also give you an estimate of the latest rates for a given currency. It is easy to use, (or there is an advanced interface), it's fast and reliable.
LeaseyBite 16 details the two utilities Leasey has for converting time between one location and another. These are find the current time in a specific location and convert between two different locations at a specific date and time.
LeaseyBite 15 demonstrates the LeaseyNews app. Browse top headlines from over 80 news sources, select any one of seven broader news categories or search over 5000 news sources by entering key words.
LeaseyBite 14 works through all aspects of LeaseyWeather. Using any location, get a seven day forecast, view an hour by hour forecast for the day and configure the output relating to the weather details. Searching for place names is also possible.
LeaseyBite 13 gives you four tools to help with computing tasks: convert temperatures, check holidays, perform calculations or look for words in the dictionary.
LeaseyBite 12 contains three useful search tools. Learn how to find products on amazon and EBay, together with locating recipes.
LeaseyBite 11 describes the YouTube search facility together with how you can manipulate the video to gain the most from it.
LeaseyBite 10 introduces you to the popular LeaseySearch tool and shows you how to use Google as an example of its usefulness.
LeaseyBite 9 works through the process of using LeaseyClips, another tool for quickly reproducing text.
LeaseyBite 8 teaches you how to create LeaseyAbbreviations, a form of shorthand so you can reproduce blocks of text with the minimum of keystrokes. A demonstration is also given of renaming LeaseyTexts.
LeaseyBite 7 gives a demonstration of LeaseyTexts; to regularly reproduce large or small passages of text at any time.
In LeaseyBite 6, many of the methods for selecting text with Leasey, together with copying it to the Windows Clipboard, are explored. You will also hear a demonstration of checking the Clipboard contents in an efficient manner.
In LeaseyBite 5, we talk about how some of the smaller features in Leasey can make you more productive as a JAWS user. These items include maximising windows automatically, audio splitter, placing the window title into the JAWS Virtual viewer, changing the volume level and more.
In LeaseyBite 4, you will hear about some of the additional items on the Hotkey Help menu. There is also a demonstration of setting up the default locations and date format required for Leasey features to perform optimally.
In LeaseyBite 3, we learn how to search Leasey's Hotkey Help and the best way of reading the online documentation.
In LeaseyBite 2, we explore Leasey's Hotkey Help system, both in supported environments such as word processing, together with the category list.