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Sue Martin's J-Say Story

The combination of JAWS, Dragon, and J-Say is far more than a sum of its parts. It's such a unique way of interacting with a computer that it's becoming known as, "Computing the J-Say way." The help available to the user exceeds the quality of help in any other computer context I've experienced and it's all done with natural language. There are three different help commands in J-Say. "Where am I," "What can I do," and, "What commands can I say?" the information given in response to these commands is context sensitive. The, "Where am I," command is similar to the JAWS command for speaking the title of the focused program but gives additional information. The, "What can I do," command has no parallel in JAWS and is extremely helpful for novice computer users. If the command, "What commands can I say," is issued the commands for the particular application in focus are placed in the virtual viewer where the user can navigate through them by saying, "Previous command," or, "Next command."

J-Say directly supports Word, Outlook, and Internet Explorer. This support is quite robust. Aside from these directly supported applications, J-Say gives support throughout Windows menus and dialog boxes. If necessary, the user can deploy the Dictation Box in order to enter text into unsupported applications.

When dictating text, J-Say causes JAWS to echo the dictation as recognized by Dragon so that the user knows exactly what the computer heard. The user may choose to have the dictation echoed at each pause or have the dictation echoed only when a final punctuation is spoken. If there is a mistake in the recognition J-Say completely supports the correction dialog box. So, for example, if the user speaks a ten word phrase and only one word is misrecognized, J-Say allows the user to specify the incorrect word by number and then correct just that word by spelling it out. Of course, if the entire phrase needs correction, this can be done with the voice as well. The user may choose whether to have each letter echoed during the correction process or can have the build up of the phrase spoken instead.

An alternative method of correction may be used as follows: Dragon offers up to nine possible alternatives to what it heard the user say. J-Say allows the user to hear all of these choices and numbers them. If one of the alternatives is the correct phrase, the user may say, "Choose X," and the correction process is done.

In any dialog box the user may simply say the name of the control or property sheet that he wants and he will be placed on that control or property sheet. The user may also say, "Move forward or back X controls. The controls may be placed in a list by saying, "Select a control," and then either move up or down the resulting list with verbal commands.

In Outlook the user has access to all of the features of Outlook with some custom features added by J-Say. For example, the user can easily create sets of commands to switch folders and copy or move messages to folders. Contacts may be added either directly from an open message or manually. J-Say gives a nice method of adding contacts in that the user may place the fields of the contact in a list and jump right to the E-mail address field with one command.

I think the coolest features of J-Say are present in Internet Explorer. Every single JAWS command is available as a voice command, and then some. The commands, "Where am I," and, "What can I do," are present everywhere but in I E they are extremely context sensitive. If I am on a web page, say at the top of the page, the command, "Where am I," causes JAWS to give me a summary of the page, how many links, headings, etc. Then, if I say, "What can I do," J-Say gives me general information about how to navigate a web page. If, on the other hand, I'm located in an edit field and use those two commands, J-Say tells me that I'm in an edit field and I can dictate text but it also lets me know whether forms mode is on or off and what to do to manipulate forms mode.