Hi Paula,
There's another way to navigate to the tabs in Java Preferences without having
to use the TrackPad in a hit or miss fashion, but I thought you might only need
to get to the "Network" pane, so the trackpad instructions would have been
easier to use. I should have guessed that you would need to go to the
"Security" tab, since that's what I personally expected would need fixing. Let
me outline this for you in case you need to use this, but the instances are
pretty rare. I'd forgotten about having encountered the problem with Java
Preferences over a year ago.
Macs have another accessibility feature called "Mouse Keys" that can be used by
people with motion disabilities that make it difficult for them to move
precisely to a link or form control where they need to click or activate or
enter text. The tie-in for VoiceOver users is that you can move your cursor
horizontally, vertically, or diagonally with Mouse Key commands to locations
that the VoiceOver shortcuts won't take you to. A typical instance where this
was useful was playing the sound samples on the old Audible.com web pages,
before they switched over to HTML5, so they could be accessed from iOS devices.
Even though there were no hooks in Adobe Flash player controls for VoiceOver
to use to move to, you knew that the player control was just a few pixels to
the left or right of the label for "Sample". Well, it was actually about 50-60
pixels to the right (although this number changed with time as they redesigned
their web pages). But if you knew the offset and could move to it, by having
VoiceOver tell you what was underneath the cursor, you could click on the
control to play the sound samples. And you only had to calibrate this once,
until they changed the layout again. The drawback of Mouse Keys is that
they're used for fine positioning control, so each key press in this mode only
moves the cursor 1 pixel. However, it's another way to move in an absolutely
straight line with your cursor, and if you ever need to come back to the same
set of controls, you can keep a record of exactly how many key presses it takes
to navigate to the few places you need to get to.
So in case you, Sarah, or someone else on this list needs to get back to the
Java Preferences tabs for Blackboard related fixes, here's how you can do it
with Mouse Keys.
You'll first want to navigate to "Universal Access" under "System Preferences…"
and select the "Mouse & Trackpad" tab to turn Mouse Keys on. The preferred way
to do this, if you want to be able to turn this on and off quickly, without
having to navigate back to the Mouse & Trackpad pane, is to check the box that
lets you turn Mouse Keys on or off by pressing the Option key 5 times.
1. VO-M or Control-F2 to move to the Apple menu on the menu bar.
2. Arrow down to the menu, and type "s y" to move to "System Preferences…" (or
arrow down to it) and press return
3. Navigate (e.g., tab to) "Universal Access" and select with VO-Space
4. In the "Universal Access" menu, navigate with Right Arrow (or VO-Right Arrow
if Quick Nav is not on) to the "Mouse & Trackpad" tab and select it with
VO-Space.
5. Navigate (Right arrow or VO-Right arrow) to the check box for "Press the
Option key five times to turn Mouse Keys on or off" and check it with VO-Space.
6. Close the System Preferences window with Command-W
Now, to use Mouse Keys to navigate to the tabs in Java Preferences we're going
to start navigating to the heading "Java Preferences" in the title bar of the
application, and routing the mouse cursor to the VoiceOver cursor position.
Then we're going to turn Mouse Keys on and move vertically down to the
application tabs with Mouse Keys key presses to the (vertical) center of the
Network tab, and next move horizontally across to each of the other tabs with
Mouse Keys. So with Mouse Keys you use the 3 by 3 set of keys for the numbers
1 through 9 on a numpad to move your cursor, with the central "5" key
representing your current position. On a Mac laptop, the keys you use are on
the right side of the keyboard, where the embedded numpad used to be located on
the old PowerPC Mac laptops: "7 8 9" corresponds to "7 8 9" on the numpad, "u i
o" matches "4 5 6", and "j k l" matches "1 2 3". So the "i" key is your
current position, and if you tap the "u" key to the left of it, you move your
mouse cursor 1 pixel to the left. Tap the "o" key to the right of "i", and you
move 1 pixel to the right. Tap the "8" key above the "i" and you move 1 pixel
up. Tap the "k" key below the "i" and you move 1 pixel down. (You can also
move diagonally with the "7", "9", "j" and "l" keys). On a full-size desktop
keyboard, you use the actual numeric keypad for Mouse Keys. Because you've
already gone to your "Announcements" tab under "Verbosity" in VoiceOver Utility
and checked the box for "Speak text under mouse after delay", and then set the
slider for the delay time to 0 seconds, when you move your cursor over the tab
keys you'll hear this announced. Tapping the "5" key will do a mouse click.
7. Open Java Preferences (e.g., Command-Shift-U to go to your Utilities folder,
then press "j" to move to "Java Preferences", and Command-Down arrow to open it
-- or just navigate to Spotlight with Command-Space, type in "java" and press
return.)
8. Navigate (Right arrow or VO-Right arrow) to the "Java Preferences" heading
in the title bar, then route your mouse cursor to your VoiceOver cursor with
VO-Command-F5.
9. Press the option key 5 times to turn mouse keys on
10. Press your "k" key 35 times to move your cursor over the "Network" tab. VO
will say "Network radio button" when you move onto the tab. The tabs in this
pane are each about 75 pixels long in the horizontal direction, and 20 pixels
tall in the vertical direction. You can click on a tab with your "i" key to
select it whenever your mouse cursor is anywhere over the tab.
11. To move to the "Security" tab, press the "u" key to move left about 15
times. Click this tab by pressing your "i" key if you want to select it.
12. To move to the "General" tab, press the "u" key about another 70 times.
13. To move to the "Advanced" tab, instead of moving to the left in step 11,
press your "o" key to move right about 70 times. Remember that if you have to
move between the end tabs ("General", "Security", "Network", and "Advanced")
it's going to take you around 75 key presses to move horizontally through each
tap. Moving vertically down from the "Java Preferences" heading takes you to
the left end of the "Network" tab.
14. When you selected the tab you want by clicking/pressing with "i" key, you
can turn Mouse Keys off again by pressing the Option key 5 times.
You can adapt these instructions to other situations where you need to use
Mouse Keys. In a few circumstances where the focus jumps when I move my mouse
cursor with Mouse Keys, I'll turn cursor tracking off (VO-Shift-F3) before I
move with the keys, and then turn cursor tracking back on again (another
VO-Shift-F3) when I'm done.
One warning: for people using extended keyboards. You should not have NumPad
Commander turned on if you also turn on Mouse Keys because the definitions of
how the numpad keys are used will conflict. I think you may find that the
Command, Control, and Option keys may not work correctly if both settings are
active.
HTH. Save this if you need to navigate the Java Preferences menu again before
they fix this issue. Cheers,
Esther
On Jul 22, 2012, at 12:22 PM, Paula Hobley wrote:
> Thanks Lyn
>
> Yes, I did do this. I'm still having trouble finding things when I use the
> track pad though, it's a bit hit and miss. Is this normal?
>
> Thanks for your help
>
>
> Take care
>
> Paula
>
>
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