This person is based in Spain and I am pleased to report that he has been traced and severely dealt with. I don't think we will see any more of this type of activity.

Sight & Sound Technology

Hi folks, I am a blind user of the JAWS screen reader software as well as a DSA needs assessor and was, although perhaps a little naievely, very disappointed to see the text that I have pasted below posted on a Jaws mailing list.

I hasten to point out that, firstly, the originator of the mail was based in the USA and, secondly, the list moderator and almost all of the list members jumped on the topic immediately.

Jaws has a very good scripting ability and it would appear the the perpetrator of this little number has used this feature to insert chunks of exam-related text that can be buried and that will be spoken by Jaws without appearing on the screen, although they can also be inserted as required. This would enable an unscrupulous student who is using Jaws in an examination to cheat . I regret having to say this, but perhaps this information needs to be diseminated...

Inserted text follows...

> Hello everyone.
> I have made a set of scripts for cheating on exams/test. The scripts
> work like this. When you press one of the different hotkeys to give an
> answer, control 1 through 7, control shift 1 to control shift 7,
> control f1 through f12 and control shift f1 through f12, once or twice
> quickly, jaws will speak a different answer without showing anything
> on the screen. I have been using these for 2 years now, and never got
> caught. Mine are for wordpad , but they can be used with any other
> application by just renaming the files to the application we want. The
> scripts give more than 70 answers, and what I usually do is grab my
> notes file, copy one line, paste it, press backspace and space bar so
> there is no line break between a sentence and another because if
> there's a break the script will will show a compile error message. You
> can put in as much information as you want in each hot key slot, but
> it can get tedious to get through a lot of information from just one
> key, so what I do is put different small bits of information in the
> different keys. I never used up all of my keys, but if anyone needs
> more slots, just tell me and I will definetly do something about it.
> if anyone is interested in using these scripts, contact me off list.
> my adress is
>
...inserted text ends.