Sticky Keys and Accessibility Errors For Windows 11

First, I just want to express my thanks for Microsoft’s help for the blind, with free apps like Seeing AI, which uses artificial intelligence to identify things through the smartphone camera, or Soundscape to help the blind navigate places, which is totally unrelated to what I’m writing about.

I just wanted to write up this article with the hopes that these Windows 11 bugs would be ironed out. Thanks.

(I’m using an HP desktop running Windows 11 in case that’s helpful, and use the JAWS screen reader)

No Warning When It Comes To Updates

Windows 11 isn’t telling me when it updates, or giving me any warning in advance that the next time I start the computer there will be a 30 minute update waiting for me. What do people at the regular work sites do, I wonder? I guess they have an I.T. department to make sure that doesn’t happen. idk.

So, I’m just at the mercy of Windows for periods of time where there’s no way for the screen reader to work and I have to hope the computer is doing what it’s supposed to. Sometimes other programs can knock off the screen reader, so I never really know what’s going on for a while. I give the computer like five minutes and use my hotkey to launch JAWS. If it doesn’t come on, I use Seeing AI to read the screen and then know it’s a Windows update.

Lock Screen Issues

This is more of a Windows 10 issue, I think. 1st problem is it’s difficult to get out of the lock screen for a person using a screen reader. I tell my students to hit enter twice, but that doesn’t always work if they’ve already tabbed or arrowed before they realized it came on while they were away.

Once that happens and focused has moved, it’s just good luck finding your way out. Hit anything and everything and maybe it’ll go away.

2nd problem is in Windows 10, at least, it’s not reachable to turn off the Lock Screen without sighted help. It looks like this was fixed in Windows 11, but I haven’t tried it out.

Sticky Keys

Is the whole reason I wrote this article, actually. I turned them off, and they’re still wreaking havoc. They come on without warning, I hit all kinds of commands by accident, and it’s accidentally causing lots of problems.

I checked two different ways and both checkboxes say sticky keys are off, but they’re definitely not off. I keep having to press both alt keys to turn them back off. This wouldn’t be so much a problem if random alt commands weren’t accidentally being sent to the computer.

once you’ve told the computer several commands and didn’t realize that was happening, you have to wonder what you just did and how to undo it. This can take a while if you perform some settings change. I wasted at least 30 minutes yesterday having to fix some obscure, hard to find setting, messed up by sticky keys.

I probably should just do some Windows Registry fix, or something like that, but really don’t like to mess with that for fear of messing something up.

Thanks for all your hard work. I hope you have a nice day. I’ve been studying computer programming some, for fun, and am in awe of the things you guys can do. I certainly don’t take it for granted. Windows is a great tool and isn’t given enough credit IMO.

Here’s the link to my Upwork profile in case you’d ever like any feedback or freelance work. BTW I wrote an formatted this article, links headings and all, in Word 2016, and just pasted it into Medium. lol