JAWS on Windows

Use this page as the Windows-specific reference for JAWS when your accessibility program standardizes on Freedom Scientific tooling alongside or instead of NVDA.

When to use this

Use JAWS when your team needs to validate important desktop screen-reader flows on Windows and compare behavior across assistive technologies.

Onboarding: start a productive session

Launch JAWS before the browser if your IT policy requires it; otherwise JAWS attaches to the active window.
Open Chrome or Edge (match your automated scan browsers where possible).
Press Insert + Space to enter Forms mode when interacting with native controls, and return to virtual cursor for reading-heavy pages (JAWS announces mode changes).
Use Insert + F6 for headings list, Insert + F7 for links list—fast ways to audit IA after a scan.
Document findings with speech history (Insert + Space, then H) when filing bugs.

What to validate

screen-reader announcement quality
control labels and state changes
table, form, and dialog behavior
keyboard-only task completion

Pairing with Accessibility reports

Pick the top five automated issues from All Issues.
Reproduce each with JAWS active; note whether the issue is real-world blocking or a false positive.
Update tickets with JAWS-specific notes (version, synthesizer) for engineering.