Microsoft Word displays the most recently used commands within the menus of Word 2000. If sighted users wish to view all the contents of the menu, they may either click on a down arrow or wait a few moments for the menu to resize itself. This can be a bit frustrating for screen reader users. The menus can lose focus and force us to start all over again.
To avoid this frustration, you may configure the menus to show all of the options all of the time. Open the tools menu of Microsoft Word Cursor down to "customize" and press etner Press alt + o to access the "options" property sheet Use the Tab key to locate the option: "Menus Show Recently Used Commands First" Uncheck the option by pressing the spacebar Press Enter The menus will now display normally.
Configuring the Toolbars of Word 2000
The Standard and Formatting Toolbars of the applications within the Microsoft Office 2000 suite of programs are all configured to show the standard and formatting toolbars on one row. This can cause some problems when accessing the programs with a screen reader. You may wish to separate the toolbars. to do so, follow these steps: Open the tools menu of Microsoft Word Cursor down to "customize" and press enter Press alt + o to access the "options" property sheet The first option on this property sheet is "standard and formatting toolbars share one row." Use the tab key to locate the above option and uncheck it by pressing the spacebar Press Enter The toolbars will be separated allowing screen readers to properly identify selected data on the display.
Disabling Automatic Bullets and Numbering By default.
Microsoft Word likes to assist you in creating bulleted and numbered lists. You may be typing a list of items only to discover that Microsoft Word "helped you out" by formatting the list with bullets. If you would like to decide for yourself when bullets or numbers will be added to your lists, follow these steps: Open the tools menu of Microsoft Word Press enter on "autocorrect" Press control + tab one time to access the "autoformat as you type: property sheet Press the tab key until you locate "automatic bulleted lists" Press teh spacebar to disable the option by unchecking the checkbox Press the tab key one more time to locate "automatic numbered lists" Press the spacebar to disable the option by unchecking the checkbox Press enter You may now type lists without fear of Microsoft Word adding any additional formatting Enabling and Disabling Format Control Characters While you may not always hear them, the spaces, paragraph breaks, tab controls and other formatting features of Microsoft Word are actual characters. These characters are not normally viewed but may be toggled on and off through the use of the control + shift + 8 keyboard command. If you start to hear every space and carriage return in your document, this could be a signal that you accidentally enabled the option through the use of the control + shift + 8. Just press the keyboard command again to disable the feature.