GWConnect (previously known as GWSkype) is a product from GW Micro, the creater of Window-Eyes screen reader.
What is GWConnect?
Ever since the initial release of the Skype client in mid 2003, people from all around the world have used it to initiate high-quality voice and text conversations,
send and receive files, and stay in touch with one another. The visually impaired community, likewise, has used Skype since then to facilitate equal communication
with each other and their sighted counterparts.
However, as the service has grown, so too has the program. For years, screen reader users have kept up with Skype's ever-morphing interface either with
custom patches, scripts, or apps. While largely successful, such utilities must be constantly maintained as any new version of Skype can, and often will,
cause previously working scripts or apps to stop functioning properly.
In mid 2011, Skype announced its SkypeKit developer program. This service allows program developers to directly access nearly all Skype services without
the additional need of traversing its user interface. Developers, therefore, can create their own interface to Skype and seamlessly integrate it into their
own products. And, because the underlying Skype services are much less likely to change on a whim, GW Micro decided to take advantage of this service and
create a simple, elegant, fully accessible interface to Skype which is designed with the visually impaired community in mind.
Having full control of the user interface also means that unlike the official Skype client, GWConnect's interface will not dramatically change from version
to version. When you learn how to use GWConnect today, you can be confident that your knowledge will continue to apply in the future as new versions are
released.
Why GWConnect?
• GWConnect will always make the Skype service available to blind and visually impaired computer users regardless of new versions of Skype that are released.
• GWConnect is a demonstration of the power of interfacing with Window-Eyes.
• All blind and visually impaired users who are running Windows can use GWConnect at no cost. Even those consumers not running Window-Eyes can still download
and use GWConnect.
Don’t worry about you don’t have Window-Eyes! You can use with any screen reader like JAWS or NVDA with GWConnect.
GWConnect 2.0 has been released with lot of changes, The following major changes have been made to GWConnect since version 1.06. Please consult the GWConnect documentation (included with the download) for full details on all new features. To get the download link quickly, press “U” if you use screen readers such as Jaws or NVDA.
New Features and Changes:
• GWConnect can now be made ad-free for non-Window-Eyes customers. Please visit http://www.gwmicro.com/catalog/gw_connect for details.
• GWConnect's startup time has been reduced.
• You can now rename contacts in GWConnect. Either choose the Rename item from the Contact/Context menus or hit F2. If the renamed text is blank, GWConnect
will fall back to the contact's own display name or phone number (in the case of Skype Out contacts).
• A new privacy dialog has been added to the Skype menu. This will allow you to limit who can call you, send you IMs, etc.
• Also under the Skype menu is a voicemail options window. Here you can enable/disable whether voicemail is active for your account as well as record your
own greeting. Note that it appears that for this feature to work, you have to explicitly enable the voicemail option from your Skype account on the web
if you haven't already done so.
• Added SMS support. Note that the Skype Kit only supports sending SMS messages. There is presently no way to receive them. Additionally, you must have
sufficient Skype Out credit or sending the message will fail.
• Added an "Answer" item to the Call menu so you can now use this directly from the main UI in addition to the dialog or global hotkeys.
• When a call begins, GWConnect will now tell you who's calling if you have enabled speech messages.
• Under the call menu is a "Hold/Resume Conversation" menu item. This will let you put the active call on hold locally and resume it. GWConnect will announce
the new status of the conversation; e.g. "conversation on hold" or "conversation resumed."
• The Contact menu has a "View Mood Text" item for people who weren't able to see the full mood text column. All this does is open a message box with the
mood text for easier review.
• Added Alt F1 through Alt F12 (excluding Alt F4) to switch to different preset contact views such as Skype Contacts, Skype Out Contacts, etc. The name
of the new view is also announced.
• There is a new tab in the options window called "Startup & Shutdown." All choices related to GWConnect's startup, minimization, and shutdown behavior
have been moved here.
• Added an option to the Startup & Shutdown tab to ask you whether you want to close GWConnect on exit. This is enabled by default.
• Added the option to have Alt-F4 minimize GWConnect rather than close it outright. This option is found in Options/Startup & Shutdown.
• Added an option to automatically answer incoming calls (under Options/General). When active, any incoming calls will be answered but only if you aren't
already in a call with someone else. If you are, the caller is sent immediately to voicemail.
• In options/general is an edit box where you can instruct GWConnect to hang up if you don't answer an incoming call after X number of seconds (default
is 30). Enter only whole numbers greater than 0. Note that this option will only do something if you have set this value to be greater than 0 and if you
have enabled voicemail for your account.
• An option to speak timestamps for incoming and outgoing chat messages has been added to Options/Speech (default is unchecked). This setting is entirely
independent of the "show timestamps" option for the message log.
• A new checkbox has been added to the speech tab to cause GWConnect to always say "alert" prior to any of its messages. This is disabled by default. Note
that this only applies to program-generated events such as when contacts sign in, a message is received, etc. Anything you do which would normally cause
speech (such as changing contact views, reading messages in text chat windows, etc. will not produce the extra "alert" text.
• The message log tab in the options dialog has been renamed to "History."
• Under the history tab of the options window is a new group of radio buttons which will let you choose how much text chat and recent event history should
be retrieved. The default is to only retrieve activity from the last 30 days.
• Added a checkbox under the "Startup & Shutdown" tab of the options window to let you choose whether to run GWConnect when Windows starts. There is now
no need to re-run the setup program or manually delete the GWConnect shortcut from the local user's startup group if you want to change this behavior after
installing GWConnect.
• A setting has been added to Options/Files which will allow you to have GWConnect automatically close file transfer windows when they complete.
• You can now automatically accept incoming files when the respective checkbox is checked in the Files tab of the options window. When enabled, any existing
file will be overwritten, and the incoming transfer will be accepted without any intervention.
• If you place or accept a call while one is already active, you are now asked if you want to put the original conversation on hold, hang up on the original,
or try to merge the calls. If you choose to put the original on hold, it will automatically resume once the new conversation ends. This behavior is configurable
under the options window.
• Added a "Call Back" button to the voicemail playback window. When clicked, it will stop the active voicemail (if one is playing) and place a call to the
person who left the message.
• If you place a call to one or more contacts with phone numbers defined (either by you or in his/her profile), you are now asked which one you want to
call.
• You can now assign office, mobile, and other phone numbers to contacts by choosing the "Assign Phone Numbers" item from either the Contact or context
menus. Note that whereas you can assign three numbers to a regular Skype contact, you can only assign two for a Skype Out contact.
• Your Skype Out balance can be viewed via the respective option from the Skype menu.
• You can now view a contact's local time in the view profile window.
• The program now says and shows user display names for incoming calls. Before, GWConnect would show only the person's Skype name or telephone number.
• The names of call participants are spoken when calls begin.
• When editing your profile or assigning phone numbers to a contact, each respective entry is normalized before the change is committed to Skype.
• Text chats now include a status line which will allow you to see when members of the active conversation are typing. Similarly, a checkbox to options/speech
has been added to let you choose whether GWConnect speaks something when someone in an open text chat types a message. In addition, GWConnect likewise
will send the appropriate notifications to members of a chat when you type.
• Added Control-A, Z, X, C, and V hotkeys to select, undo, cut, copy, and paste text inside chat and SMS windows.
• Messages in text chat windows are now displayed a bit differently to make them easier to read visually.
• When inviting users to a text chat, you can now choose as many people as you like rather than only being able to add one person at a time.
• If you sent a message whose contents was a single emoticon, GWConnect would play the outbound message sound but failed to display it in the message log.
This has been fixed.
• Adding users to an existing one-on-one conversation worked, but the title bar of the chat window would never update when adding someone to a conference.
This has been fixed.
• If a conversation is put on hold remotely or if a participant puts you on hold locally, GWConnect will now speak and display a message saying as much.
In addition, a short beep will play every ten seconds while the active call is held.
• GWConnect can now detect when the list of available audio devices changes; e.g. if you plug in a USB headset, GWConnect will re-initialize the audio devices
and try to keep hold of your input/output preferences. There is still a known problem where the microphone on certain cards such as the Sound Blaster Audigy
will become active regardless of your preference in the Windows Volume Control. This is a known Skype Kit limitation awaiting resolution.
• If you have more than one voice conversation active, you can now switch among them by using Control-Alt-F1 to go back or Control-Alt-F2 to go forward.
Or, use the Previous/Next Conversation items under the call menu. GWConnect will speak and display the information about the new call which is activated.
• When a call ends, GWConnect will speak and display its final duration on the status line similar to native Skype. If you don't want this to happen, uncheck
the respective checkbox in Options/General.
• GWConnect now keeps track of individual conversation durations as long as they're live. This means that if you switch among conversations, GWConnect will
be able to keep up and display the correct duration on the status bar. Note that timing will cease whenever a live conversation is put on hold and start
again when the call resumes.
• When adding Skype Out contacts, you can now optionally assign a display name to the newly added phone number.
• You can now send multiple files in a single file transfer request.
• In the view profile window, GWConnect now shows the person's birthday (if given) in the default locale's format. e.g. in the US, you will see something
like 8/29/1984 or in the UK, 29/8/1984. We also show the person's age if his/her birthday is available.
• Under the Skype menu is a new item called "Change Language." This allows you to set GWConnect to run in any of its supported languages. If you decide
to change the language, GWConnect will ask if you want to restart for the new change to become active.
• If you first ran GWConnect in one language, hotkey descriptions in the options window would always appear in that language even if a new translation later
became available. This has been fixed.
• You can now send and receive contacts to people in your contact list or in text chats. Use the "Send Contacts" option from the Contact or context menu
in the main window or by clicking the aptly named button in the chat window. Choose the contact(s) you want to send, and once done, the people at the other
end will receive notifications allowing them to add the contact to their Skype buddy list, view his/her profile, or ignore the contact.
• Added a reset settings option to the Help menu. You will be asked whether you want to continue. If you answer yes, your settings will be deleted and GWConnect
will restart as if for the first time.
• The system tray icon is always present so long as GWConnect runs.
• GWConnect now stores window positions in addition to sizes when you move or size them.
• If you moved or resized the main GWConnect window, the defaults would continue to be used on the next launch. This has been fixed.
• Shortened the message descriptions in the recent events window; e.g. instead of "message received from Blah," there is now just "message from Blah." Additionally,
call durations are displayed when available.
• Sent/received messages in the recent events window now include their contents when applicable.
• Under the Call menu are two items for turning the speaker volume up and down. Additionally, you can use Control-Alt-F11 and Control-Alt-F12 to accomplish
the same from within any other active program. A "speaker volume" slider has also been added to the devices tab of the options window. Note that until
Skype provides a way to disable microphone AGC, GWConnect will be unable to adjust your microphone volume. Appropriate controls will be added once this
becomes possible.
• Custom contact groups are now fully supported. You can add, edit, and switch to custom groups of your choice from under the "Custom Groups" item of the
View menu.
• GWConnect will no longer receive keyboard focus if it is configured to run from the system tray on launch.
• Unicode (rather than ASCII) text is sent to your chosen screen reader. Text written in non-Latin languages will be spoken correctly, assuming the screen
reader in question correctly supports Unicode.
• Control-Alt-End has been added as a global hotkey to Hold/Resume conversations.
• Added a hotkey to mute/unmute program-generated speech (Control-Alt-F3 by default).
• A global hotkey has been added to repeat the most recently spoken message. it is Control-Alt-F10 by default.
• Fixed the problem where the incoming authorization sound would play but no window would appear.
• GWConnect would not always speak or display messages whose contents were single links. This has been fixed.
• An option to repeat the caller ID of an incoming caller has been added to Options/Speech (enabled by default). When active, GWConnect will repeat the
name of who is calling every five seconds.
• Added a hotkey to focus the most recently active chat within the active GWConnect session (Control-Alt-C by default).
• Choosing "Show Main Window" from the GWConnect system tray icon would sometimes do nothing. This has been fixed.
• When you tried to leave a voicemail for someone, GWConnect would sometimes hang up immediately when the voicemail window opened. This has been improved.
Note that Skype are still investigating voicemail-related issues that some GWConnect users have reported. An updated runtime will be shipped with GWConnect
when the issues have been corrected.
• A number of visual changes have been made which will not impact screen reader users.
• Fixed the issue where the settings file would sometimes become corrupted at program shutdown.
• Many minor bugs have been corrected thanks to error reports.
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