Visually impaired users who utilize text-to-speech screen reading technology, such as Microsoft Narrator, require this functionality when using Flex Terminal Emulator. Out of the box, when the application is started, Narrator and other screen reading programs will not read the contents of the host screens. However, an available option may be used to provide this.


By default, a shortcut saved to the Windows desktop to start a specific Flex Terminal Emulator Workspace would look something like:


"C:\Program Files\FlexSoftware\FlexTerm\Flex.exe" "C:\Users\MyUsername\Documents\FlexSoftware\FlexTerm\MyFlexWorkspace.aws"


To enable screen reading, simply add the /M flag after the Flex Terminal Emulator program executable, for example:


"C:\Program Files\FlexSoftware\FlexTerm\Flex.exe" /M "C:\Users\MyUsername\Documents\FlexSoftware\FlexTerm\MyFlexWorkspace.aws"


Note: the flag is not case sensitive, so /m and /M may be used interchangeably, and it may be placed anywhere after the executable path.


Once enabled, the following navigation options are active when Narrator or another screen reading software is used:


Up/Down Arrows

Press the up and down arrows to move the cursor one row, which will read the text of the entire row.


Left/Right Arrows

Press the left and right arrows to move the cursor one column, which will read the single character found at that position. If no text is found, it will read "space".


Ctrl+Left/Ctrl+Right

These key combinations will jump to the previous or next word on the host screen and read that word. Note that the Word Left and Word Right host keys must be mapped to the Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right key combinations for these to work, which is the default. For more information on keyboard mapping, see the Keyboard topic under Configuration.