This tutorial has been written by our Technical Support Officer Paul Traynor.
For anyone who is just starting off with using email on their computer, either desktop or laptop and who uses screen readers such as JAWS or NVDA for example then here are some notes that might help you writing up your first email within that client.
Important: You should have already configured your email account within the Thunderbird client before attempting to send/receive any emails.
To begin writing up the email;
- Open up Mozilla Thunderbird from the shortcut on your desktop.
Notes: Just press the “Enter key” once on the shortcut and wait for it to open. If you are using magnification software such as ZoomText and you use a mouse then “Double left click” on this icon to have it open.
- When Thunderbird opens up, it should ideally be set to open up within your email accounts “Inbox”. Assuming this is the situation now we can begin the process of setting up our first email by pressing keys, “Control + N” pressed once.
Notes: a “new blank email screen” will appear.
- The first thing that we are now required to do is to insert a person’s email address. Type in someone’s email address depending on who you are intending the email to go out to.
- Once you have inserted the recipients email address now press the “Tab key” once and you are placed in the “Subject line” of the new email.
- Here be sure to type in a “meaningful subject for your out-going email. This subject should be something that reflects the nature of the material that is going to be within your email and is especially relevant if the email is going somewhere that is going to have a certain importance attached to it.
- After typing in the subject line now press the “Tab key” once more and you are placed in the main body of the email.
Notes: The main body of the email is where you will now begin writing up your email just like you were writing up say something like a standard letter and so on.
- After having finished the writing of your email, read over it and run the spell checker on it also just to make sure that no bad spelling has gotten through.
- When you are ready to send the email and while you are now focused on that email, press keys, “Control + Enter” once.
Notes: The email will now be sent and you will be returned to your main “Inbox”.