ITunes & JAWS

By steven carey, 5 June, 2012

Forum
Windows
Dear All, I notice that ITunes doesn't work very well with JAWS (I have the latest version of JAWS 13) and I have a great many problems using JAWS with ITunes, so much that I have to ask a sighted person for help. Do others using JAWS have this problem? I have seen some software for sale called J-Tunes, which was developed here in the UK by T & T consultency, which looks to be useable. Has anyone else used it and does it work with JAWS and ITunes? Kind regards, Steve.

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Comments

By Shersey on Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 09:31

You can grab Blind-Tunes, a free alternative to the $75 J-Tunes. I can't attest to how well these JAWS scripts work myself--but they're worth a try, at any rate. You can grab a copy of the free screen reader, NVDA, which supports iTunes very well. It's not too hard to learn. They just added support for the iTunes store! It is also free, and works from a USB stick or other removable media without the use of authorization keys--it's worth a look! I use it as my primary screen reader! The website is: http://www.nvda-project.org Also, you might want to try organizing your iTunes library into lists. You can make it so that your artests are in one list, your albums in another, and your tracks in another. Any time you select something in one list, say the artist lists, it changes both the tracks or albums lists to include those songs--and only those songs. It's pretty neat. I'm not sure on all the specifics of all of the steps you have to go through to set this up completely, as it's been a while since I've done it, But I know the first thing to do is to switch the view to list view by pressing enter on it from the view menu. Just hit Alt-V and you'll be there. Arrow down and you'll find it. You can also tell iTunes to only sync selected playlists. I think you have to do this from the iPhone's listing in the sources list. So, arrow down until you come to your iPhone or iPod or whatever, and open it by hitting right arrow on the device-name. Then, arrow down to get to music. after that, hit tab until you hear something like "Music radio button." Press space on that, and then you can tap to sync selected playlists. The sync selected books option is changed by clicking on the books radio button and setting it from there. If you don't come to the option in books right away, don't panic. It's there, past the table of eBooks you may have on your device, and past the combo box of audio books. You'' get to it. You can make a plalist of audio books and that's where you'll go when you want to chick the box for it to be synced to your iDevice. You only have to check these boxes once--iTunes remembers your settings. If you're like me and often leave a few things on that never change, it's great. Even if you don't, you can always just change the content of a playlist called music or books and keep the box checked. As long as the playlist's name stays the same, iTunes doesn't care what's on it or that it gets changed--it'll just sync the new stuff and take the stuff you've deleted from it off the iDevice. I hope this has helped in some way. I'm sorry I can't give more detailed explanations. If you have more questions about the process--just post here. It might jog my memory. Hey, maybe when I figure all this stuff out again, I should write a blog post on AppleVis about how to set this up so that you can more easily manage your mcontent ion iunes. Note: I believe you might have to manage your music manually for this to work--in fact, I'm almost certain of this. I keep all my music in one folder, with artest/arbum folders, so this isn't a problem for me. And the same goes for my audio books. I'm still not sure on how to make iTunes referes it's library when I make changes to ID3 tags with programs other than iTunes. Ah, well, now I'm ranting. Good luck! iTunes can be really hard to get working the way you think it should! Wishing you well, Shersey

By Eileen on Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 09:31

I am using windows XP and jaws 13 with the latest version of ITunes. I am able to sync my phone, search, buy apps and transfer data for apps like Read to Go. What functionality do you want to do? The F6 key jumps jaws from the search box to the main list of choices. I hardly use ITunes these days as I do everything on the phone itself. However, when I first bought my phone I was more comfortable attemting these things from my PC. Eileen
I actually use blindTunes. I used to use j-tunes, which was $75, and had all kinds of problems with it. BlindTunes is free, and works like a dream. The link is: www.blindtunes.net
How do you make a playlist to copy music onto the Iphone? At the moment, I'm copying and pasting music manually onto the iphone from windows explorer. and would I still be able to copy and paste files into the playlist from windows explorer? I have my music organised in windows explorer and find it easier to navigate through it using that. Finally, how do you subscribed to a podcast in Itunes that is not in the podcast directory? Thanks

By steven carey on Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 09:31

Dear Shersey & others, Thank you for your comments so far. This afternoon I downloaded a trial version of J-Tunes and found little difference in terms of accessability, so comments concerning problems with operating with this software might be true. I'll try Blind-Tunes next to see what that's like. Just for clarification, I want to manage my music as much as possible along with my apps from the Apps store. However, I would also like to have a go at downloading Daisy audio books, which are available from the RNIB in the UK if you have a subscription to the RNIB talking book library. Unlike in the states, the British are a little slow at developing apps for the IPhone and at present I can't download Daisy books using Bookstream, which is the RNIB's alternative streaming service for its Daisy audio books (I can only choose and get the books on CD through the post. Access to ITunes will allow me to do this alone. Kind regards, Steve.

By Shersey on Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 09:31

In reply to by steven carey

I've never really understood how iTunes file sharing works--maybe this is what you're referring to? It's weird that Read2Go is giving you these errors. I don't use the app myself, and don't live in the UK, but it might be worth contacting Bookshare about the issues you've been having, paticularly the issue of you not being allowed to download certain titles to the device. I would think that your title selection is automatically limited if it knows you're a UK resident, as not all titles in Bookshare's library are available to international subscribers. As for managing your music/other content manually, it's the way I do it. I do manage apps on the device itself, rather than with iTunes--I just never saw the need of managing things like that in iTunes--so I can't speak to the accessibility of that process.

By Randy on Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 09:31

I don't use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts. I use a great podcast app called downcast. There are a couple of podcast catchers out there. This is the one I favor. Its around $1.99 US if I recall. Try it. You won't be sorry.
I don't like Itunes but I'm thinking if I'm using it to manage my phone then may as well download podcasts with it as well and it will make it easier to backup and restore all the itunes settings like podcasts etc when I work out which folders they're saved in, instead of copying files from differnt programs.

By Neo on Saturday, June 23, 2012 - 09:31

In reply to by Neo

I found the podcast Freedom Scietific did on how to use Itunes with JAWS 12 quite useful Steve. It didn't answer all my questions but it does give you a good walk through on managing music and browsing the itunes store from within the itunes program. It is a two part podcast from about 2010. I don't have the link that I got it from but a google search should bring it up.