Support

Read the Help

The first thing you should do before starting to use the course is to read the "General Course Instructions", which are available as part of the course.

You should also use the help system integrated in the course. You can find a link to a corresponding help page at the beginning of each exercise.

Note that the help pages relate to the exercise types and there is only a limited range of exercise types. Once you read a help page for a certain exercise type, you learn to control all the other exercises of the same type. So you don''t need to read the help for the same type again.

Moreover, most of the exercise types are variants of two basic kinds – the choice-based exercises (where you choose one of the predefined answers) and the fill-in exercises (where you type your answer into a text-box). In this respect there is very little you need to learn about each exercise type.

Surviving without JavaScript

When your browser doesn''t support JavaScript, the course is still usable. You just won''t be able to use the automatic exercise evaluation.

In general, all the exercises based on choosing from a predefined set of answers will work well. These are the following exercise types:

* Multiple Choice Questions * True/False Statements * Selections * Gap Filling

A sound response is played when you choose the answer, so you know whether your answer was correct or not.

The exercises where you type into a text-box are a little less convenient to use without JavaScript. These are the following:

* Vocabulary Practise (Test Yourself) * Sentence completion * Transformation * Cloze * Dictation

You can type your answer into the text-box, but you will have to check manually whether it is correct or not. To support this, there is an answer sheet link next to each text-box (the ? – question mark – link). Follow this link to see what the correct answer is.

The Dictation exercise is more or less unusable without JavaScript, since you are not able to play the dictation section by section. Also checking such a big chunk of text manually is quite difficult.

Also, without Javascript, for all the exercise types you don''t see your score below the exercise.

Personalized WEB settings for Jaws

Personalized settings for a domain can be set using Jaws+Shift+V. The settings below are our recommendations for eurochance.brailcom.org.

You may prefer to use other settings, and one example is for "Links With Text Only: Screen Text". When using this setting a ? is shown in exercises. This ? means: "Show the answer sheet". To show "Show the answer sheet" set "Links with text only: title tag".

When using multilingual speech synthesizers "Language Detection: On" is preferable. If your synthesizer has one language only, this setting may be set to Off.

* Virtual Cursor: On * Navigation Quick Keys: On * Graphics In HTML: Tagged * Graphics Recognized by: Alt tag * Links with Graphics: All * As a last resort: graphic''s URL * Links In Image Maps: Alldetect * Links With Text Only: Screen Text * Link Type Announcement: Off * Link, Same Page Announcement: On * Buttons Recognized by: Screen Text * Forms Mode Uses Virtual Labels: off * Forms Mode Auto Off: Enabled * Language Detection: On * Field Prompts Use: Label Tag * Frame Announcement: Off * Inline Frames: Hidden * Screen Follow Virtual Cursor: On * Skip Past Repeated Text On New Pages: On * Increase Line Length: 150 * Decrease Line Length: 150 * Increase Nonlink Text To: 25 * Increase Nonlink Text To: 25 * Decrease Nonlink Text To: 25 * Block Quote Announcement: On * List Announcement: On * Element Attribute Announcement: On * Table Announcement: On * Layout Tables: Off * Heading Announcement: Heading and Level * Flash Movies: Off * Refresh Flash Movies: Off * Refresh Page: Off * Custom Page Summary: Off

Additional Jaws settings

Jaws interprets the first table row as a heading row by default (even when this row is not marked as a heading). To fix that, you can set it to read only marked headers. This setting is not available as a "Personal web setting", and has to be set manually:

0 Open Internet Explorer 0 Press Jaws+V 0 Select "Table titles" in the list and press Space until "Only marked headers" is selected 0 Press Enter

Exercises Based on Choices

This tip applies to the following types of exercises: * Multiple Choice Questions * True/False Statements * Selections * Gap Filling

Press Spacebar to check and uncheck radio buttons. Pressing Space again will not change its status, but the evaluation will be repeated with less response from JAWS. It is not necessary to use the Form mode in these exercises.

Exercises Based on Typing into the Text-Boxes

This tip applies to the following types of exercises: * Vocabulary Practise (Test Yourself) * Sentence completion * Transformation

0 Go to the first edit field 0 Press Enter (Form mode is selected) 0 Enter your answer 0 Press Tab to go to the next edit field (Jaws reads the question) 0 Continue by entering your answer.

It is not necessary to leave Form mode when completing these exercises. Your answers are evaluated when pressing Enter. Press PC cursor to switch the form mode off.

The Dictation Exercise

The dictation is only used in the intermediate course.

Listen to the dictation. Go to the edit field and press Enter to open Form mode. Continue as recommended by Exercise help.

The Cloze Exercise

Press Enter in the edit fields to open Form mode. Write your answer and leave Form mode again (press PC-cursor).

The Exposed Cloze Exercise

This exercise is only used in the Advanced course. The possible options for the answers are listed at the beginning of the exercises. We recommend the following procedure to switch easily between the list of options and the exercise tasks.

0 Read the sentence 0 Set a temporary place-marker (Ctrl+K) 0 Go to the list of options by pressing Shift+l 0 Read the list of options and choose your answer 0 Press "k" to jump to the temporary place-marker 0 Go to the edit field. 0 Press Enter to open Form mode, write the chosen phrase and leave Form mode 0 (press PC-cursor) 0 Go to the next sentence and repeat the procedure above (1-7).

JavaScript Support

As of March 2006 none of the named text browsers has sufficient JavaScript support. If you use a JavaScript enabled version of any of the browsers, you will have to turn JavaScript off for the course. Note, that this may change in the future.

See Surviving without JavaScript for more information on how to use the course without JavaScript.

Setting-up the MP3 playback

To configure w3m-el to play the recordings, you should customize the variable w3m-content-type-alist. If you don''t have an item for the content type "audio/mpeg", add one. Set the Regexp to a String value "\.!mM!pP3$" and configure the External viewer to an appropriate Command, such as mpg123. Set the Arguments to pass file.

Note, that w3m-el reloads the page every time you play a sound. As a consequence, you will always go to the beginning of the current document. To get back to the place where you invoked the playback, you will have to invoke the command w3m-view-previous-page (the ''p'' key or left arrow).

Getting More Support

Feel free to contact Free(b)soft mailing-lists for more support with using w3m-el. See http://www.freebsoft.org for more information.