AAC, switch use & Jaws

[Sally]

I need some suggestions for a high school student who uses a Dynavox with a switch, and needs to progress to using Jaws or another screen reader for Internet access and other software access. He has a visual impairment, is non-verbal and has little use of his hands. He can use a switch.
An update - we've installed Jaws for Windows on his Dyanvox, and will be customizing some of the keys for the Jaws commands. Hopefully that will work. If anyone has any experience with Jaws and a Dynavox, suggestions would be appreciated.

[Laurie M]

My (belated) 2 cents.

My experience is mostly through single switch access to a PC and Jaws. It has been a chronic problem with single switch scanning software since Jaws and the scanning software interact with the OS in ways that neither recognizes what the other is doing. Our greatest success in this area has been to use a hardware morse code device input (vs an emulator) - but this is certainly quite cognitively demanding, and it has been a few yeatrs since we have had a client with such challenging needs. The other thing we had to do with Jaws is turn on the Insert mode - so that the Ins key could also have a "sticky" function.(I trust you already discovered this!)

I would love an update on how successful this was... (please!) What was the outcome with this client?

[Sally]

Actually, the school tried to put an antivirus program on his Dynavox, so that when he accessed the Internet while on the school network, the network would not be affected. The antivirus program caused his Dynavox to stop working completely, the student and staff got very upset, and the staff decided that the student was not ready for any of this. So the entire process is on hold, until the student becomes more comfortable with scanning, and with his Dynavox. (I was not at the school when any of this happened, so had no input into the outcome). Thanks for you advice, though. Hopefully we'll be able to help him eventually.