JAWS Scripts For TeamSpeak
Doug Lee
Last Revised October, 2023

This document describes the scripts for TeamSpeak and provides tips for using this application with JAWS. This document can be opened from within TeamSpeak via a double press of JAWSKey+F1 (or Insert+F1).

Table of Contents

• Why Scripts For TeamSpeak?
• System Requirements For JAWS Users
• Script Installation Instructions
• Key Sequences
• Commands and Features
  • Summary of Features
  • Navigating Chat Messages
  • Title Announcement Enhancements
• Tips , Tricks, and Caveats
  • General Information
  • Creating and Editing Hotkeys In Options
  • Customizing the TeamSpeak Toolbar
  • Advanced Information
• Revision History

Why Scripts For TeamSpeak?

TeamSpeak includes a number of accessibility features, but JAWS natively does not interpret much of TeamSpeak's accessibility information effectively. These scripts aim to fill the gap between TeamSpeak's accessibility support and JAWS' expectations. The scripts also provide several useful commands for retrieving information and accessing TeamSpeak features.

System Requirements For JAWS Users

• There are no known system requirements for these scripts beyond those for TeamSpeak itself.
• These scripts are designed to work with TeamSpeak versions written using Qt 5.12.3 and 5.15.2. See the Revision History section for application versions tested.
• Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of TeamSpeak are supported.
• JAWS 2018 or higher is required. JAWS versions older than 2019 have not been tested carefully.

Script Installation Instructions

To install these scripts on a new system:

1. Install JAWS if this has not already been done. This will require administrative privileges on the computer.
2. Run JAWS as the user for whom the scripts are to be installed. This and the following steps must be performed for each user of the computer who will be using JAWS with these scripts.
3. Download and run, or run directly, the installer for these scripts; and follow the on-screen directions. Be sure to install the scripts in the currently running JAWS version if a JAWS version list is presented.
4. To verify successful installation, type Insert+Q from within TeamSpeak. part of the JAWS spoken response should be a revision number. If you do not hear a revision number, the scripts are not correctly loaded.

Key Sequences

These scripts incorporate commands that consist of sequences of keystrokes, all beginning with a common prefix, or "command keystroke." This approach allows many script commands without the risk of conflicting with application keystrokes. See the "Multi-Key Command Sequences" section of the "Common Script Elements" document for further details, including how to explore the available script commands (similar to exploring a menu system), and how to change the Command keystroke if necessary.

By default, the Command keystroke for these scripts is [. This document may refer to this keystroke as [ or Command; so, for example, [ Tab and Command Tab both refer to typing the prefix keystroke, then separately the Tab key. Some sequences may consist of more than two keystrokes, or "levels"; for example, [ d r would refer to typing [, then d, then finally r.

Commands and Features

This section and its subsections describe the commands and features provided by these scripts.

Summary of Features

• Many field names are spoken as expected though they are not without scripts. Some fields that have extra descriptive information speak that information after the normal JAWS speech for the field.
• Checked menu items, such as profiles under submenus in the Self menu, should announce "checked" when reached by arrow keys.
• Insert+T, the JAWS SayWindowTitle command, is enhanced to include several useful items beyond what is displayed at the top of the window (see the next subsection).
• The sequence [ A clicks the Apply button in dialogs where it is present and enabled. This may be useful while making numerous changes in a dialog, such as when editing multiple audio profiles one at a time.
• [ B, or alternatively JAWSKey+F8, brings up a list of toolbar icons for review and selection. Users may customize the TeamSpeak toolbar, so this provides a means of making frequent actions easier or more accessible.
• When applicable, the sequence [ N cycles among windows associated with the current TeamSpeak instance. [ Shift+N does the same but in reverse window order. Use these to return to dialogs, incoming Poke windows, etc., after moving focus out of TeamSpeak and then returning to it.
• Combo boxes that sometimes fail without the scripts to speak on up and down arrows should speak normally. This issue is handled natively in TeamSpeak 3.6 by the Qt 5.15.2 upgrade.
• JAWSKey+B, the normal command for reading an entire dialog box in tab order, is scripted to read some TeamSpeak screens and dialogs more intelligently.
• The standard command for reading the status line, JAWSKey+PgDn, works as expected.
• Typing [ T brings up a list of tabs in screens containing tab controls. Press Enter on a tab to activate it. Note that this tab list may include tabs from multiple tab controls at once; for example, if TeamSpeak is connected to two servers at once, there will be a tab control of servers and another tab control of chat histories for the active server. The scripts will include the word "active" beside any tab that is currently selected.
• The commands for clicking with the left and right mouse buttons, when pressed while the PC cursor is active, will click at the current PC cursor location. This is particularly useful on tab controls: Press the RightMouseButton key after focusing a tab to get a context menu for that tab, including a way to close it. (Ctrl+W should also close the active tab in current TeamSpeak versions.) The left mouse button command is required while editing hotkeys.
• As the user arrows through the channel tree, some extra information may be spoken about the highlighted entry. Currently, the extra items announced are
  • Whether the entry is a server or a channel (participants are identified by not saying one of the other two),
  • Number of clients in a server or channel,
  • Codec type and special conditions for a channel (e.g., if it has a password),
  • The operating system type for a participant,
  • If the participant is muted or locally muted, and
  • If the participant's volume is locally raised or lowered.
• When focus is in the channel/participant tree, [ I presents a JAWS virtual buffer of information about the highlighted entry in the tree. The information will vary based on whether the highlighted entry in the tree is a server, a channel, or a user.
• When focus is in the main window, [ C presents a JAWS virtual buffer of messages in the displayed message window. The tab control in this window determines which messages are displayed. Choices include server messages, channel messages, and private messages to or from another user if any have been received or sent. To switch among tabs, Tab to the tab control and use left and right arrows to choose a tab.
• There are a number of commands for reviewing chat messages without altering focus. These consist of multi-key sequences and will be detailed in the next section.
• In the event of a TeamSpeak crash, JAWS should better announce the error message that appears.

Navigating Chat Messages

The following table shows the commands available for navigating chat messages without altering focus. Note that the command key, [ by default, can be followed by any number of navigations without another command key. Press Esc when done navigating with these.

Title Announcement Enhancements

Insert+T, the JAWS SayWindowTitle command, includes a number of enhancements beyond saying just the title of the active window. The items included are, in this order and as applicable:

• The original window title (e.g., "TeamSpeak 3", a volume control title, etc.).
• When more than one TeamSpeak window is open, the position of this window among them and the count of windows available. Such windows can include volume dialogs, server lists, poke popups, and other TeamSpeak instances. The key sequences [ N and [ Shift+N cycle among them. Use these sequences to return to dialogs, incoming Poke windows, etc., after moving focus out of TeamSpeak and then returning to it.
• The nickname being used in this TeamSpeak instance, when this instance is connected to a server, and when the status bar is displayed (default), as the nickname must be drawn from the status bar. If the status bar content has been changed by the user, the nickname may not be included.
• The word "on."
• The name of the server, taken from the server tab control. This is generally the bookmark name from which this connection was opened. When this TeamSpeak instance is not connected to a server, this will appear as "No server."
• The actual server name from the channel tree, if different from the above name. This name is parenthesized when it appears.
• When there are multiple server tabs, the position of the current one among them and the number of tabs available.
• When more than one TeamSpeak instance is running, similar information for TeamSpeak instances (position and count).

Tips , Tricks, and Caveats

This section and its subsections provide useful tips and information for performing various tasks in TeamSpeak.

General Information

If Backspace says "blank" instead of announcing the character being erased, you can temporarily add a Space at the end of the current line while editing. JAWS only has trouble announcing the last character on an edit line in this application.

Pressing the Application key on the menu bar (after pressing Alt to activate the menu bar) will present a menu of options allowing parts of the TeamSpeak display to be made visible or invisible. Of particular interest is the Master Volume control, which allows adjustment of the overall TeamSpeak volume. The default value for this slider is 0, and it can be moved with arrows to become positive or negative. This is also how users can customize the TeamSpeak toolbar to make frequent actions easier.

When using the RightMouseButton command on a tab control, arrow left and right before clicking to make sure JAWS knows which tab is active. Otherwise, the click may be applied to the first visible tab regardless of which one is active.

Creating and Editing Hotkeys In Options

The following procedures should help with creating and editing hotkeys in TeamSpeak:

• Open Options with Alt+P.
• Arrow up or down to find "Hotkeys" in the list of pages.
• To review hotkey assignments that already exist, Tab until JAWS says "table," then use the four arrows to explore the table of existing assignments.
• To add a new hotkey, type Alt+A to reach the Hotkey Setup screen, then follow the instructions in the next list.
• To edit an existing assignment, find it in the table, then type Alt+E to reach the Hotkey Setup screen. Then follow the instructions in the next list.
• To exit the Hotkeys screen (and Options itself), press Esc.

To edit or create a hotkey, go to the Hotkey Setup screen as just described, then follow these steps:

1. Tab several times, past the key definition box, until JAWS says "Show Advanced Actions." Depending on the action you want to assign to a key, you may need to check this box. When in doubt, check it, so all possible actions can be found below. This box may not exist in all TeamSpeak versions.
2. Shift+Tab once to the previous control, which is the tree of available actions. If you do not find this tree, use Shift+Tab to look for it. In some TeamSpeak versions, Tab skips over it.
3. Using the four arrows, Right arrow in particular to expand tree nodes, locate the action you want. Toggling the aforementioned "Show Advanced Actions" checkbox may help here. Make sure, before attempting to assign a key to an action below, that the action you are choosing is an actual action, not a tree node with further descendants. For example, when Advanced Actions is checked, "Toggle Playback Profile" (under "Playback Profile") has a descendant for each available playback profile.
4. To choose the action and move to the key assignment stage, press the JAWS LeftMouseButton command twice in quick succession. This will effect an actual double click on the selected action. Focus will automatically move to a control that allows you to type the keystroke you wish to use. If this does not happen immediately, try the double click again. If this still does not happen, you probably selected an item with subactions, in which case the clicks only expand or collapse the list of them.
5. Type the keystroke just as if you were using it; e.g., type Ctrl+Shift+O if you want to make Ctrl+Shift+O execute the action you selected earlier. Focus will return to the action you selected in the Actions list.
6. To save the keystroke, press Enter, which presses the OK button. Focus will now return to the table of key assignments.
7. To close the Options screen, press Enter and then, if the Options screen is not now closed, Esc. The Enter actually opens an edit screen on the currently highlighted key assignment, and the Esc closes both that and the Options screen.

Customizing the TeamSpeak Toolbar

The TeamSpeak toolbar can be customized to contain frequently accessed features. In some cases, doing this can simplify or even improve the accessibility of frequent operations. To customize the TeamSpeak toolbar:

• Tap Alt by itself to focus the menu bar.
• Tap the Application or Menu key, or use Shift+F10 if your keyboard does not have this key, to bring up a context menu from the menu bar. Pressing the Down arrow key after doing this will focus and speak the first item in the context menu.
• From the context menu, choose "Customize Toolbar." A dialog will appear. The main elements of this dialog are an "Available Actions" tree, a "Selected Actions" tree, and buttons for moving actions into, out of, and up and down within the Selected Actions tree.
• Add an action by locating it in the Available Actions tree, then tabbing to and pressing the Add button.
• Remove an action by locating it in the Selected Actions tree, then tabbing to and pressing the Remove button.
• Alter the order of actions in the Selected Actions tree by locating an action to move, then tabbing to and pressing the Move Up or Move Down button as appropriate.

Advanced Information

The below information is likely to be of use only to advanced users of TeamSpeak.

Right-clicking on a bookmark in the Bookmarks menu, then pressing the Down arrow once, will open a context menu allowing you to edit the bookmark, connect to it normally, or connect to it by creating a new tab. The final of these options is a way to make multiple simultaneous connections to different servers.

Once multiple connections exist at once, it may help to make TeamSpeak activate the microphone in the current tab every time you navigate among server tabs. Do this in Preferences > Application.

When multiple server tabs are showing, the JAWS SayWindowTitle command, Insert+T, will name the active server and indicate its position among the tabs and the number of tabs showing. Close the active tab with Ctrl+W or via right-clicking and choosing the appropriate Close option.

If you have connected to one server multiple times simultaneously using different tabs, use the status line reading command, JAWSKey+PgDn, to identify which of your nicknames is active in the current tab.

When there are multiple server tabs open and a hot key is assigned to toggle microphone mute, the announcements "Microphone muted" and "Microphone activated" can be incorrect with respect to the active server tab. Use arrows to find your name in the active tab to see whether "Microphone muted" speaks after the name. (This issue was verified on March 18, 2015, in TeamSpeak for Windows version 3.0.16.

Revision History

Here is the revision history of these scripts, most recent revision first:

Revision 318, October 15, 2023, tested against application version 3.6.2

• The minimum required JAWS version for these scripts is raised from 17.0 to 2018. This permits much faster code for identifying and naming some fields.
• The information spoken for participants in the channel tree is reorganized slightly to make volume offset and mute status speak sooner.
• Some spin controls announce themselves better during arrowing through their values.
• All, rather than just one of the filtering checkboxes in the Client Log screen for log levels are available in tab order.
• Various Log Client screen fields are better named.
• This document includes a new paragraph explaining how to work around problems with Backspace.
• Radio buttons announce position and count when tabbed to.
• When the user has placed the master volume control on the screen by customizing the TeamSpeak toolbar, JAWS will name it and avoid saying "toolbar toolbar" before its name.
• Fixed labeling of some controls in the 3-d sound setup dialog and possibly others. This includes the naming of controls that appear when the Test Mode checkbox is checked.
• The commands for repeating the current chat message during scripted chat navigation, [ NumPad5 and [ K, will announce the message position and count after, rather than before the message itself.
• There are various efficiency improvements in the code for naming fields.
• Fixed a mysterious "D" entry in the Tab sequence for the Command key, and the missing entry for [ I, the command for reporting extra information about the currently focused server, channel, or participant in the main screen's treeView.
• The UIA support is refactored significantly and updated to account for recent increases in JAWS' UIA support. A JAWS restart after installing this script update is recommended, though not required. This refactor is being applied to several projects. Users who use several of this author's script sets may notice a slight reduction in JAWS' memory consumption as these updates progress.
• By popular vote, old history entries in this document section are now hidden inside a details tag that may be expanded to show them. Among the benefits of this, heading count is reduced and text searches won't match very old material.

Revision 299, October 28, 2022, tested against multiple application versions

Note: Please read this section carefully before upgrading, as some commands and features have changed. In particular, several key combinations that have for years been duplicated by multi-key sequences are removed in order to avoid key conflicts. This will be explained, followed by the other changes and fixes.

This script release was tested against

• TeamSpeak 3.5.7 (Qt 5.12.3), and
• TeamSpeak 3.6.0 (Qt 5.15.2).

Command changes: The non-layered equivalents for most of the script commands, long considered deprecated, are now removed. This will avoid various possible collisions with application keystrokes and user-defined TeamSpeak hotkeys, as well as avoiding occasional issues where TeamSpeak or JAWS or Windows comes to believe incorrectly that the Alt or Ctrl key is stuck down. The following list will help users of the old commands switch to the key sequence equivalents:

• If you used Alt with digits to read recent chat messages, use the prefix key ([ by default) followed by as many digits as you like, then Esc to exit the layer. This change frees up Alt with numbers for use as TeamSpeak hotkeys. One example usage is to make Alt with numbers switch among Capture profiles and Ctrl with numbers switch among Playback profiles, to make switching sound devices intuitive and extremely fast. See Creating and Editing Hotkeys In Options for how to set up TeamSpeak hotkeys.
• If you used Alt with Home, Left, NumPad5, Right, or End, or Alt+Enter, to read chat messages sequentially, instead type the prefix key followed by as many navigation keys as you like, then Esc to exit the layer. The navigation keys are H for first message, J and L for previous and next, K for current, and ; for most recent. This change frees up Alt with Left and Right arrows for hotkey assignments, such as for adjusting TeamSpeak volume on the fly.
• If you used Ctrl+` to switch among available TeamSpeak windows, use the prefix key followed by N instead. You need not type Esc after this sequence. [ Shift+N is also available to cycle through available windows in the opposite direction.

Other changes in this release:

• The scripts are updated to work under TeamSpeak 3.6, which includes a Qt framework upgrade from version 5.12.3 to version 5.15.2. This script update specifically fixes the following commands and features for TeamSpeak 3.6, so that they work as they did under TeamSpeak 3.5:
  • Extra information announced during navigation in the channel tree.
  • The [ I command for examining information about the focused item in the channel tree.
  • Chat navigation and examination commands, including [ C.
  • Announcement of menu items when not properly reported by TeamSpeak and/or Qt accessibility events.
  • Reporting of combo box values during arrowing or typing.
• Extra pauses during the reading of extra channel tree item information are removed.
• The key sequences [ N and [ Shift+N are added for switching among available TeamSpeak windows. These sequences replace (and extend) the old Ctrl+` command, which is now removed as already indicated. The script author apologizes for the oversight of having left these sequences out by mistake in previous script releases.
• Keyboard help and multi-key sequence help are added for message navigation command sequences. Due to a limitation in the JAWS keyboard help system, however, keyboard help for sequences consisting of the prefix key ([ by default) followed by a digit 1 through 9 or 0 will not be spoken correctly in keyboard help mode.
• The key sequence [ T for bringing up a list of tabs now adds the word "active" to tabs that are currently selected. Because this key sequence can produce a list of tabs from multiple tab controls at once, there may be more than one active tab.
• This document is updated to apply more accurately to TeamSpeak 3.5 and 3.6 in a few places.

Revision 285, February 15, 2022, tested against application version 3.5.7.0 (Qt 5.12.3)

• Checked menu items, such as profiles under submenus in the Self menu, should announce "checked" when reached by arrow keys.
• During navigation through a chat, blank messages will say "blank" instead of saying nothing.
• The JAWS RightMouseButton command works more reliably to right-click items in a tab control.

Revision 277, December 8, 2021, tested against application version 3.5.7.0 (QT 5.12.3)

• During navigation via the chat reading system of commands, trying to move past the first or last message will click instead of beeping and repeating the last message.
• TeamSpeak server information reports more correctly for Mac OS X servers.
• Menu closure and treeView focus should be spoken more reliably as they occur.
• Radio buttons are included in Insert+B output as appropriate.
• Removed the Quick Settings "Speak Chat Messages" option, intended for controlling the automatic announcement of incoming chat messages, because this option was never implemented and would conflict with TeamSpeak's automatic "Message received" announcement when a message arrives.
• Further minor code updates including updates for JAWS 2021 and 2022 support.