If you are a screen reader user and have had difficulty finding an accessible word processor ever since you upgraded to Windows Vista, take a look at Jarte. There are plenty of reasons to like Jarte, which by the way, is spelled with an ‘e’ at the end for my text-to-speech friends. It’s by Carolina Road Software, and it’s free. The newest version, 4.1 has lots of great new features, some of which have previously appeared only in the paid version, Jarte Plus.
I’ve tried using Open Office, but I found that it did not work well with my version of ZoomText. Perhaps one might have better luck with JAWS, but I’ve tried several versions of both Open Office and ZT with no result. One of the aspects of Jarte I appreciate is that it supports a screen reader mode that seems to happily cohabitate with ZoomText, and Jarte behaves very similarly to the old versions of MS Word from the XP days.
Here is the “what’s new” list, taken directly from the jarte.com web site:
An optional Quick Bar feature has been added that provides instant access to a number of frequently used features.
In addition to left aligned tabs, Jarte’s ruler now supports right, center, and decimal aligned tabs.
A new Stay on Top option has been added to the Options menu.
A global hot key can be defined for the Clip List menu. This makes it easy to access the Clip List while using programs other than Jarte.
A new Paste Board feature displays a special document tab that automatically records everything copied to the clipboard.
A new Line Guide feature displays a colored, translucent, moveable, horizontal bar that can be used to highlight a line of interest in a document.
Jarte’s interface background pattern can be changed to one of the installed backgrounds, extra backgrounds provided on the Jarte web site, or to any custom background. Previously, this feature was exclusive to Jarte Plus.
Jarte’s various color selection palettes now include a new row of color selection buttons to which the user can assign custom colors.
Jarte now supports the keyboard’s Scroll Lock key. When Scroll Lock is enabled document scrolling can be performed using the up and down arrow keys. The Scroll Lock state is displayed in the status bar. This feature can be disabled.
Jarte will now automatically mirror the left and right page margins, and the header and footer lines, between odd and even pages when printing double-sided printouts.
If the "underline" font attribute is selected for the header/footer font then Jarte will draw a solid line across the printed page under the header line and above the footer line.
Jarte will now perform a descending order sort when the Sort feature is selected while pressing the Shift key.
Clicking the "Go to Top" button on the Find Bar while pressing the Shift key will now cause the text cursor to move to the bottom of the page instead of the top.
Pressing the Shift key while the mouse is positioned over a tab causes the full file path of the document to be displayed in Jarte’s title bar.
The position of a table column can now be easily moved via the Edit Table window.
The Options menu on Jarte’s Find Bar now includes "Insert Carriage Return" and "Insert Tab" items which make it easy to include those characters in the search text.
The status bar can now switched to a text based status bar. This may be preferred by users who use Jarte’s Minimal Layout. Right click on the status bar and select "Use Text Status Bar".
Double clicking an empty area next to the tabs will now start a new document.
Many other small tweaks and enhancements have been added.
Here’s the link:
Considering that this little gem is free, it is wonderfully robust and feature-rich. Happy writing!
LL