Recently on the (Blind Christians) list someone made mention of new materials available for the Bible Seeker program. available for download at: http://www.bibleseeker.org
I downloaded the basic program which comes with the KJV, Easton's Bible Dictionary and Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary. It is an 8MB download. I use Theophilos a lot and wanted to compare them and see how they might hold up to one another. By the way, Theophilos also comes with the same references, is about 7MB and is also free. You can download it from: http://www.theophilos.com
Bible Seeker was unbelievably easy to install. Definitely a breath of fresh air compared to modern install screens with sometimes wierd graphical buttons and screens that don't play well with screen readers. Setup screens actually were read to me by Jaws without having to do the Read Dialog Box command or having to hunt around with the Jaws cursor to find the buttons and controls that many software manufacturers like to put in there.
When running Bible Seeker for the first time, it came right up in the KJV at Genesis 1:1 and was reading the passage. No special tweaks to make Jaws work better. Theophilos will work OK, but there is at least one tweak to do to make it as user friendly.
Bible Seeker says that you can compare different passages side by side. To do that you will need extra Bible versions to be installed.
You can still open more than one Bible window. Just Click on 'File' and arrow down to 'Open.' That's Alt+F and down arrow for non-mouse users. You will also see that you can use the Key Command 'Ctrl+O.
You will be in a new window at the same place as your other window that originally opened. Just Tab and you can switch versions. There will be a selection box that lists all versions you have installed. The next Tab is the book of the bible, arrow to the book you want or hit the first letter of what you want to cycle through the books beginning with that letter. Tab again to the Chapter selection box, then to the verse box, of course make the selections that you want. Tab again and There is the passage.
I noticed that Jaws began reading at the beginning of the current chapter, regardless of the actual verse I chose. However, if you do a Say Line Command, Insert+Up arrow, you will be on your verse. Use standard reading commands and keep going.
To switch between windows, use Ctrl+Tab. To Close a Window there is a command in the File menu. You can also use Ctrl+F4.
There doesn't seem to be any bookmark functions but the program will remember where you were reading and will reopen to the passage you were reading last. Any open windows will return to what they were when you last shut down the program. So to book mark passages I guess you would have to open multiple windows and go to the desired passages.
This command in the File menu will let you save the current chapter in rtf or Plain Text format. There doesn't seem to be a way to take notes while reading scripture, so this may be the best way to make your own comments that you want to keep. You could also then open any saved text in a plain text reader.
The remaining commands in the File menu are Print and Exit. You can surely guess what they will do.
Copy, Ctrl+C. Select All, Ctrl+A and Find, Ctrl+F. I could never get the hotkeys Ctrl+C and Ctrl+A to work. I always had to hit the commands from the Edit menu.
Find.
This works very well. You can enter up to 5 words in five different edit boxes and it will search for verses that contain those words. You can choose to find verses with all your keywords or verses with any of your keywords.
In other words you could type in David in one box and Goliath in another box. Choosing All Keywords will return verses that contain both those words. Choosing Any Keywords will return verses that may only contain David and others that only contain Goliath and those that may contain both.
The Find box opens in its own window as do the results. Each verse you get back is a link that can be double clicked on and you will go to that verse in context to read the scripture that surrounds it. I couldn't get that to work very well. I could only get Jaws to read the results using the Jaws cursor. To double click you have to either reach over and carefully grab your mouse and double click or use the NumPad * to double click with. Once you do that you go right to that verse in a new window. You can use Ctrl+Tab to cycle through any other open windows to get back to the Find Screen to choose more verses to view. When you are all done, To close the Find screen, use the Close Window Command. Ctrl+F4.
Tools Menu.
The only thing here is an Options command. The only thing to set is the web browser that you want to use. Assuming you want something other than Internet Explorer and have something else installed. Why is that you may ask? The actual Bible verses you see are powered by a database, but all the other reference material is all plain old HTML web pages. More on that in a minute.
Reference Menu.
What is listed in my basic version: KJV Translators Notes, Matthew Henry Concise Commentary, Jamison Fawcet and Brown Commentary, Easton Bible Dictionary and finally an article called "How To Have Eternal Life." The Jamison Fawcett and Brown commentary isn't really there. What you get when you click it is a web page with a link to download it. I haven't yet but it is free to get if you want it.
Clicking on the Eternal Life article opens a separate web page with that article in it. The Translators notes brings up a separate web page with the original preface to the KJV that the translators provided back in the day.
The Matthew Henry Commentary comes up with a web page with 66 links in it. Can you guess what they might be? You get 2 tables, one for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. The links, of course are each book of the bible. To locate the commentary for the passage you are reading just click on that book's link. Now you get all the comments for the entire book. whew! Don't worry, it's a web page. Each chapter is a headline so you can jump through by using your 'H' key to go to each headline. You could also use the Find command to find particular text in a web page.
There are links through out the page but you might want to be connected to the Internet to use them. Rather than going back to the database to find that particular verse, the links will take you to Bible Gateway to display the passage on their web site, http://www.biblegateway.com. There's nothing wrong with that. once you are there, you have access to even more scripture versions and reference tools. It is just that sometimes I don't like to be connected. I have a dialup connection and don't always want to have a phone line tied up. Sometimes I am on my laptop and not around a power line, let alone a phone line. You could just manually go back to the database though and punch in the reference by hand if you really wanted to look it up any way.
The last Menus are Window and Help. Basic stuff here. The Window Menu lets you see what windows are currently open and you can switch between them from there. You can also either cascade or tile the windows. The Help menu has the usual About command and the actual Help file Contents.
The Help Contents are in the form of a web page. I didn't like it much because there are a lot of graphical links at the top. There are No Alt Tags on the graphics, which would help in telling what the links are. There is endless scrolling down the page to find the text of anything that is there. Once found though, it seems to be fairly helpful. I'm not sure the author of the page has English as a first language. That or they need to proof read a little better. But hey, I can overlook that as long as the point is getting across.
Bible Seeker is a very good basic program for the basic bible reader. While not fully self-contained, the use of the web page style information makes it easy to adapt for screen readers. Readability is probably even better than my favorite, Theophilos. It has plenty of references for most folks to do personal Bible Study. For the most references and synchronization though a program like Theophilos or Logos would be better, just not as readable by Jaws. Bible Seeker is definitely worth the time spent downloading it, even on a slow dial up connection.