ALVA braille display drivers

Demonstration software of outSPOKEN,  inLARGE, drivers patches and updates can be downloaded from the appropriate product information pages of the manufacture site.

Patches and updates

 

What is a VCOMM driver?

ALVA VCOMM is a program which enables communication via a parallel (LPT) port with ALVA ABT3 and ALVA Delphi series braille displays, under Microsoft Windows NT. This is established by means of a so called virtual com port mechanism. This virtual comm port is installed with an easy to use setup program. After installation, an extra serial (COM) port is created on your system. Your GUI access software will need to be installed to send braille output to a serial port; the virtual comm port. The ALVA VCOMM software internally routes this output to the parallel (LPT) port to which your ALVA Braille display is connected.

Installation

You can start the setup program by opening the run dialog in the start menu and typing a:\setup The program will ask you some questions, like which type of ALVA Braille Terminal you use and which parallel port it is connected to. It will also ask you for a port number to assign to the virtual comm port. You should choose a port number a low as possible because some setup programs for GUI Access software only support COM1 through COM4.

After the installation of ALVA VCOMM you need to reinstall your GUI access software. Or make some adjustment to the settings file of the GUI access software so that it uses the virtual comm port.

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16-bits and 32-bits ALVA braille display drivers for Windows

For operating an ALVA braille display with Windows access software several ALVA Windows drivers have to be installed. Normally the installation program of the Windows screen reader software installs these drivers for you.

Installation

What to do when you are already using an ALVA braille display with Windows screen reader software? In most cases, if you want to use recent versions of the drivers, the only thing you have to do is to replace the installed drivers with the newer ones that you can download from this page. Normally these drivers are located in the main folder of your Windows screen reader software. We advise to copy all files in the extracted folder to the main folder of your Windows access software. Make sure that there are no duplicate
versions on your system of the files mentioned in the list above.

If this does not work however or if you want to use another type of communication with the braille display than what is currently installed, for example parallel connection instead of serial, then follow the procedures described in the readme.txt file.

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ALVA Windows drivers version 2.1.0.1

This version 2.1.0.1 of the ALVA Windows drivers solves the problem that  Jaws 3.3 does not start when an ABT 3 or older (ABT 1 or ABT 2) is not  switched on or connected to the PC. After replacing the currently installed  ALVA drivers by the new ones Jaws will always start with speech support when the ALVA Braille Terminal is not connected.

The version 2.1.0.1 ALVA drivers will be included with Jaws 3.31.

Installation guideline

Be sure that Jaws 3.3 is installed for your ALVA braille display.

  • Run the self extracting downloaded file.
  • Extract the ALVA drivers to a temporary directory.
  • Copy all drivers from the temporary directory to the JFW directory, where  Jaws 3.3 is installed. Example: (If you have unzipped the download on disk) You will get the warning that the already installed drivers will be  overwritten.
  • Start Jaws and the new drivers will be used.

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Patches and updates

Update support of MS-SAPI by outSPOKEN 2.0

 

The release version of Mssapi32.exe causes a page fault error when the software speech synthesizer from the Microsoft Speech SDK Suite 3.0 is used with outSPOKEN. This problem is solved with the present version of Msapi32.exe.

Installation

To install this version of Msapi32.exe first run Sapiupd1.exe in a separate directory to extract the files Sapiupd.txt and Mssapi32.exe. Either copy Mssapi32.exe to disk 4 of outSPOKEN Ensemble/Solo 2.0 and rerun the installation of outSPOKEN or
copy Mssapi32.exe directly to the outSPOKEN directory (normally c:\osw) while outSPOKEN is not running.

In both cases it is advised to make a backup copy of the original file.

The present improved version of Mssapi32.exe can be identified by looking at the version information of the file with Windows Explorer (select the file and press alt enter or from the File menu select Properties). The file version should read 2.001, while the old (release) version does not have version information displayed.

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Support of ALVA Double Touch Cursors by JFW

Using this software update you can use the second row of touch cursors (DTC) on your ALVA Delphi braille display with JAWS 3.0/3.2. In this file you will find a JAWS braille driver which enables support of the DTC on ALVA braille displays and also some files with scripts that facilitate extra functionality for the DTC with JAWS.

Extra functionality in Jaws

This extra functionality is defined as follows:

  • If you press a DTC above the reading part of the braille display. A speech message will inform you about the context of the item you clicked on. This can be regarded as a What is this? function. If you are in a Word document a speech message will inform you about the color, font and attributes of the character you clicked on.
  • The DTC in combination with the braille cursor key will perform a right mouse click on the specified location.
  • No functionality is included for the DTC above the status cells. You can assign JAWS functions to these keys yourself using the JAWS Keyboard manager.

Further information and installation directions can be found in the ALVADTC.txt file.

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New standard key arrangement of ALVA braille displays for JFW 3.0

This braille key definition mainly comprises a key definition, but also some extra scripts. These include a speech follows braille function, say font at touch cursor, PC-JAWS cursor toggle and a braille key help function. Together with a readme.txt file this download comes with the following:

  • quick reference guide for the key functions
  • the default script file including extra ALVA scripts
  • the source file of the default script containing the extra ALVA scripts
  • the default key map file containing the new ALVA key definition

Installation

For installing the ALVA key definition you should replace the default script file and the default key map file with the ones that come with the download file. These are default.jss and default.jkm The original files can be found in the jfw30\settings\enu directory. You may want to copy the file alvakeys.txt to the manuals directory (jfw30\manuals\enu)

Technical notes

The added scripts contain English strings. The strings are included in the script source file default.jss. They are not in the default.jms file. If you are using a language other then English you should translate the strings in the script file and recompile it. The new scripts are appended at the bottom of the script source file.

This new ALVA braille key definition is based on the default file set dated 7 December 1997. It may not work with older versions.

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Driver patch for ABT3 series braille displays

On some PC's, under certain circumstances a system crash occurs when using an ABT3 braille display with JAWS. The crash can occur when the JAWS fails to initialize the braille display. This is the case when JAWS is installed with an ABT3 braille display and the braille display is not connected.

To solve this problem ALVA has modified the driver for ABT3 braille displays, ABT3XX.DLL. The new driver has file version 2.1.0.1 and product version 2.0.

Installation

Replace the original version of ABT3XX.DLL, which is located in the JFW directory by default, with the newer one. If the original version of ABT3XX.DLL has a file version below 2.1 ALVA advises to install a complete new driver set before installing the patch for ABT3XX.DLL. The newest driver set (version 2.0) can be downloaded from this site as well. An installation guide is included in the downloaded self-extractable zip file.

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