Note: This section applies to System Access Mobile Network users only. To become a member of the System Access Mobile Network, or to start a 7 day free trial, Visit www.satogo.com to learn more.
The System Access Mobile Network, or SAMNet, is your portal to information and entertainment. But SAMNet can also be your tool for accessing the web from any Windows based computer with ease once you have saved your favorite settings and preferences. To access, and change SAMNet Preferences, simply press alt+P from anywhere within SAMNet. Or, press the Modifier key plus the letter f, and press down arrow until you hear the word "Preferences". Once there, press the Enter key to reach the Preferences menu.
Also, if you are using a Screen magnifier or if you are accessing the computer by use of a mouse, you can find the Preferences button near the end of the list of options available on the SAMNet Desktop Home screen. Generally the button can be found at the bottom of the page near the "Search" button.
The Preferences Window consists of the following categories:
1. General Preferences
2. Text-to-speech preferences
3. Braille Preferences
4. Browser Display Preferences
5. Password Manager
6. Startup Preferences
7. Manage my HomeServer
8. Sync Preferences
9. Socializer Preferences
10. Manage Machines
11. Personalize Your SAMNet Home Page
12. Close
This section will help explain what some of the options are in each category.
The Key Echo setting will speak aloud the numbers and letters pressed on the keyboard. Check this box to activate this feature. Be aware that the Key Echo does not speak aloud when entering passwords.
If you check this box, the browser will echo words that you have typed once you have pressed the space bar, Enter, tab or shift+tab keys.
This setting will alert you when a link is present on any given page or list of controls. A tone will be heard to indicate that you are on a link. And this tone will play when you allow a page to be read continually. You can alter the behavior of the Link Alerts, however, links will be indicated by a tone by default. The tone indicator will be heard before the actual text of the link is spoken. You can also have links indicated by a spoken word instead by selecting "Word" from the drop down list box. If you do not wish to here any link alerts, just select, "None" from the drop down list box. By selecting none, you will not hear any textual, or auditory alert before the name of the link itself. As a result, it may be somewhat difficult to accurately determine when links are present. Note, if you are arrowing through the page, or tabbing/shift+tabbing through the page, the alert indicator will not be used, regardless of the setting you choose in this area. The setting is only applicable while continually reading through a page when using the Modifier plus the downarrow hotkey.
Checking this option will allow the SA browser to display most items in a simple list. The Simplified Menu can make some exploration of SAMNet faster as you can now press the first letter of an option to jump right to it in a large list of choices. For example, you are on the SAMNet Home page, press the letter W to jump directly to the weather center page. If a list contains several options with the same letter, pressing the letter again will take you to the next option in that list. Pressing the letter E on the SAMNet Home Desktop screen once could place you on the "Email" option. But pressing the letter E again would then move you down the list to "Entertainment".
Activating this button with the spacebar, or enter key will allow you to make the SAMobile browser come up automatically without doing anything first. For example when you activate a link from within an email message, the SAMobile browser will start reading the web page.
System Access will play a sound to let you know that the program is working on a task. The drop down box in this portion of the General Preferences will allow you to change, or even turn off, the sound that System Access will make when working. The drop down box contains three options. Classic is the familiar "warble" sound that System Access has used for some time. The "Click" option will play a clicking noise instead of the "warble" sound for when System Access is completing tasks. The other option is to have no sound play when system Access is busy. This option is labeled "Off". Just remember that any changes made in this area won't take effect until you press the OK button. If System Access or SAMNet is running on another machine when you make the change to the working sound preference, you will need to restart System Access or SAMNet on the other machine for the new working sound preference to take effect.
The first option you will encounter will be the ability to change the default language spoken. Move through the list by using the up and down arrows to find the language you prefer to be spoken aloud when reading text. Note: This setting does not change the language used within SAMNet. You will need to read text in the language you have chosen to have the optimal effect. For example, French speech will sound better when reading text in French.
The next option in this area will allow you to change your primary speech engine. Select one speech synthesizer from the given list as the engine you wish to hear when using SAMNet. Use your up, and down arrow keys to move through these choices. When you arrow to the one you want. Press tab and use the up and down arrow keys to choose your preferred voice. When you hear the voice you want, press tab to set the reading speed. Note: Additional Speech Engines can be added to this list by purchasing them separately from Serotek. You can add a new Speech Engine at any time by going to the "My Account" section and choosing an engine from one of our many options. After you have purchased your new Speech Engine, you will then be able to revisit this area and make it your default engine for spoken text.
You can also control the rate of the text being spoken. The buttons, faster and Slower, will let you increase or decrease the rate at which text is read aloud. Just move to the button you want and press it with the space bar. You will hear, "This is a test of your speech settings." each time either buttons are pressed. Find the speed that works best for you and then continue on to customize other portions of the Speech Engine.
Pitch control will let you change the pitch of speech. Again, you have two buttons, higher, for higher pitch, and lower, for lower pitch. Just like with the Speech Rate, each time you press the buttons, you will hear, "This is a test of your speech settings.". Move on to the next section once you find the pitch that sounds the best.
You can also control the punctuation that is spoken. To do this, move to the Punctuation list of choices, and press alt plus the down arrow to open the list of options. The punctuation choices are: none, some, most and all. We suggest that you experiment with this option to find the punctuation level that best suits your reading style.
You can customize the way that SAMNet looks if you find the default text size, fonts and colors aren't to your liking. This section will discuss how to change the look of the SAMNet Browser windows. It should be noted that these options only change the look of SAMNet. You will need to adjust the options of Internet Explorer, or another web browser, from that program's settings options if you would like to have it look like your SAMNet browser.
You can modify the size of the text shown in SAMNet Browser Windows with this control. Use the drop down box to increase, or decrease, the size of your text. the range can go as low as 12 point and increase all the way up to 64 if needed. the default text size is 18 point font.
Some users find that some font styles are easier to read than others. The SAMNet Browser can be set to display three font types from the Font drop down window. Arial, Times New Roman, and Verdana are available. Explore which works best for you. The default font type used by the SAMNet Browser is Verdana.
This drop down box will offer you choices for changing the colors of the text seen in SAMNet. Choose the color that feels like the best fit for your reading style. But a word of warning, do not set the foreground and background colors to the same color option. For example, setting both to Black would give the appearance of the SAMNet Browser not showing any text to you. Remember that you can always reset the features back to their default options by pressing the "Reset" button.
This drop down box lets you choose the color of the background. Think of this setting as choosing the color of a piece of paper that your text will be written on when viewing the SAMNet browser. But a word of warning, do not set the foreground and background colors to the same color option. For example, setting both to Black would give the appearance of the SAMNet Browser not showing any text to you. Remember that you can always reset the features explained in this section back to their default.
This drop down box will let you change the color of the links you have not clicked on yet. Setting this control to a unique color will let you easily see what portions of SAMNet you haven't visited yet.
This drop down box can allow you to change the color of the focus area. As you navigate through the SAMNet Browser, you can see which option will be started if you decide to press that option. You may not want to set this color to the same as the ones for Unvisited and Visited links. This may make things confusing.
This Drop down box lets you specify the color of active links. Setting this option to a different color than the Unvisited Link Color lets you know quicly what areas of SAMNet you have been to previously.
This check box tells the SAMNet Browser to use your color preferences even if the web page has a different set of colors.
This check box tells the SAMNet browser to always use your default font settings on web pages even when the web page calls for a different font type than the one set as your preference.
This check box tells the SAMNet Browser to use your font size preferences even when the web page has a different font size specified. At the bottom of this area you will find three buttons. Pressing the OK button will save the changes you have made. Choosing Cancel will close this screen without making any changes. Or, selecting the "Reset" button will put SAMNet back to the original settings for font style, size and colors. If you choose to reset your settings, you can go back and try new ones to see what works best for you.
The password manager allows you to review and delete passwords and account login information for web sites that you have visited. The Password Manager also stores information for sites that require you to login to that web site for identification purposes. In this area you can view the passwords saved by moving through the list of passwords that have been previously encountered by your system when visiting sites on the web through SAMNet. You can also tab once to view a list of passwords that have been removed from being entered into forms automatically by the Password Manager. Tabbing again will place you in a box that will allow you to specify sites where the Password Manager is never to save your data. You can also remove a site from the list by highlighting it and then by pressing the "Remove Selected Sites" button.
Note: This option is only available to those users who have System Access installed on their computer. There are two options in this area. The first allows you the ability to start System Access automatically every time your computer starts. The start System Access when I log onto windows check box will start System Access as soon as you log onto windows, or as soon as the windows logon screen disappears. The second checkbox will let System Access speak when you are in the Windows Log On box that appears if you are using a password , or multiple accounts, for starting Windows.
This allows you to enable the System Access HomeServer service. You can remove the service from your system, or stop the service. The Home Server is needed for some aspects of SAMNet to run correctly. Within the HomeServer page is a link to the preferences for Remote Controlling your home PC.
The first option allows you to choose a Braille Translation Table for various languages. Arrow up or down to move within this list to change the Braille Translation Table from US Grade 2 English to US Grade 1 English. The next control will allow you to turn off the Speech Engine and work directly from your Braille Display only. Removing the check from this checkbox will keep the Speech Engine from running when a Braille Display is active. Make sure to tab to the save your Braille settings button.
These options require the use of specific hardware. The first checkbox will allow you to have spoken labels created for content saved onto a Creative Labs Zen Stone MP3 player. These labels make navigating folders on this device easier when content from SAMNet is transferred to this device. The second checkbox will allow you to control the portion of the Book Sense XT where content for SAMNet will be stored. Check this box to let SAMNet save content directly on to the XT's internal flash storage. If this checkbox is not checked, content will be sent to the device's SD storage card instead.