Day 24: Better VoiceOver Practice

Published on 23 Dec 2018

• journal
• was
• assistive-tech
• screen-reader
• testing
• voiceover

Today I came back to practice using VoiceOver (VO) a bit more, since I was struggling with it yesterday. More practice definitely gave me more confidence. It would take a week of consistent use for me to use VO more naturally with my laptop. That's an aspiration for the near future.

• Walked through all 22 steps of the built-in VoiceOver Quick Start tutorial.
• Read Chapter 1, 2, and 6 of Apple's VoiceOver Getting Started Guide.
• Added keyboard shortcuts to my study spreadsheet.

• VO has a Trackpad Commander option. This meant that I could use some of the same gestures on my MacBook Pro (MPB) trackpad that I use on my iPhone! This was an important discovery for me, offering me cross-device ease of use.
• Control + Option + Spacebar selects my choice for interactive components like checkboxes, radio buttons, buttons, etc.
• I finally got the hang of stepping in and out of different components and windows by using Control + Option + Shift + ▲/▼ (up/down arrows). For some reason, my brain struggled with this yesterday.
• Control + Option + D gets me quickly into the dock of my MBP.
• Control + Option + M goes directly to my MBP menu.
• Control + Option + K opens keyboard help. When open this will explain what keys do when a key is pressed while holding down the Control + Option keys.
• Control + Option + H + H opens up a Command help dialog, which lists all the different keyboard shortcuts for specific commands and tasks.
• Web Spots is a generated list of areas of the current webpage based on VoiceOver's interpretation of the page's visual design.
• Control + Option + ; locks the VO modifier keys so you don't have to keep holding them for shortcut commands. This was a big deal to learn! It seemed ridiculous to keep holding down 2-4 keys at a time while pressing another key.
• Control + Option + Shift + I creates a verbal overview of the page, including how many headers, links, landmarks, etc.