JAWS V12 personalised settings

By using Personalised Settings you have the option of tailoring your JAWS and HTML configuration on a per website basis. That's right - you can create individual JAWS settings files for each website!

Why would you want to do this? Well, just think about all of those individual settings that you can adjust. For example, perhaps you want to turn graphics reading off for a particular site - but not for every site? Or how about JAWS reading links differently in one site? Or maybe you want to run JAWS with auto Forms Mode on in some sites but not in others? All of this and much more is possible.

How is this all done? Actually, you configure your settings in a very familiar way - by accessing a tree view of options (similar to the verbosity box options called up with Insert V). But whereas the Verbosity Box is concerned with changing default settings for the current session, the Personalised Settings feature is limited to the website currently in focus. Let's test it out with an example, setting a website so that Auto Forms Mode is deactivated:

1. Navigate to the RNIB website (opens in a new window/tab)
2. Silence speech with the Control key.
3. Press the keystroke of Insert Shift V to open the Personalised Settings dialog box. (Notice the keystroke is similar to the Insert V Verbosity Box keystroke.)
4. Focus will be in a tree view of options, use the arrow keys to move through the different branches and press the Spacebar to cycle through the individual settings for each option.
5. You can press the Home key to move the cursor focus directly to the top of the tree (an option called Personalised Settings). This is an important option as it is used to clear any settings you have made for the current website, simply press the Spacebar until you hear the All Cleared setting.
6. Move down the tree until you have focus on the Form Options branch. If necessary, open this branch using the right arrow key and move down into the level 1 branch. The very first option is Auto Forms Mode, so press the Spacebar to set this to Off.
7. For any of these options, you can read further information by pressing the Tab key to move to some descriptive text. When you have read the text, press Shift Tab to move back to the tree view.
8. With the Auto Forms Mode set to Off, press Home to move focus back to the Personalised Settings - notice that the value here is now "Set" - indicating that personalised settings exist for the current webpage.
9. With everything checked, press the Enter key to confirm and close the dialog box.
10. Now test out the setting by visiting a different website and checking the Auto Forms Mode before navigating back to the RNIB website where Auto Forms Mode should now be deactivated.