Getting Help in Windows 95

Windows 95 has a fairly extensive Help system which can be accessed from the Start menu. This is a great place to go if you want to find out more about how some of the accessibility features work. You will need to use the mouse to access some of the Help system features.

1. Press CTRL+ESC to bring up the Start menu. (On some keyboards you can bring up the Start menu by pressing the special Start menu button between the CTRL and ALT keys. This button has the same symbol as the Start menu button on the screen.)
2. Press h for "Help". The help window has two frames. The left frame displays Help topics and allows you to request information. The right frame displays the requested information. The focus starts out in the left frame.
3. Press ALT+s for "Search" or hit CTRL+TAB twice to bring the "Search" tab to the front.
4. Press w to move the focus to the text box if it is not already there.
5. Type in the topic you want help with. For example, to learn how to use MouseKeys, simply type in "MouseKeys".
6. Hit ENTER to bring up a list of possible topics.
7. Move the focus to the topic list by pressing ALT+t or by hitting the TAB key twice. When the focus is on the topic list, the top selection will be highlighted in blue.
8. Navigate through the list of topics using the up and down arrow keys. When the topic you want to read about is highlighted, press ENTER. The information available about that topic will pop up in the right frame.
9. Sometimes the available information will include links to other relevant information. When the focus in is the right frame, you can tab through those links and press ENTER to follow the current link. However, in order to switch the focus, you need to left click the mouse in the right frame. Sometimes following the link will bring you to a new Help page, and sometimes it will pop up a little information box on the current screen. To get rid of the information box, click the left mouse button. You can press ENTER to get rid of the box, but then you lose your focus and need to click with the mouse in the appropriate frame to get it back. Sometimes the box that pops up has submenus itself. In this case, you can navigate through the submenus using the up and down arrow keys, and press ENTER to get information about the new topic. However, if you do not want to see any of the topics, you need to click the left mouse button to get out of the small box submenu.
10. When you are done reading the material in the right frame, you can look at some of the other topics listed in the left frame. While the focus is in the list of topics, you can navigate up and down the list using the up and down arrow keys to view as many of the topics as you want.
11. The Help browser works much like a web browser, with Forward and Back buttons to move you between topics you've already selected. There are no keyboard shortcuts listed on the buttons, but both are available through the Options menu. To go back, hit ALT+o+b and to go forward hit ALT+o+f.
12. When you are finished with the Help window, hit ALT+F4 to close it.

Contact us at infotechaccess@server.rehab.uiuic.edu

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