Joanne,
for me the podcasts etc do help, but by far the biggest thing that very few
people seem to throw up as the most obviously easy way into Mac usage is to use
QuickNav.
let me explain, there are a number of ways to use a Mac, unlike with a PC,
where you can really only use the qwerty keyboard.
A Mac has different commanders as they are referred to, these are ways of
inputting commands or actions to Voice Over to make a desired thing happen, be
it navigation or more.
you can use your keyboard, with the Voice Over keys, control and options, with
a range of additional keys to activate various commands. You can use the number
pad if your keyboard has one to also do the same, if you have a track pad you
can use that to gesture like you can on an iPHone, iPod Touch or iPad.
but the big one for me that is often overlooked is Quick Nav, quick nav uses
the four arrow keys to enable you to quickly navigate around everything from
finder Windows, to apps, to text edit areas to the internet etc.
firstly you need to know that in certain cases you have to turn quick nav off
and indeed back on again. you enable / disable quick nav using the left and
right arrow keys pressed once at the same time. quite literally left and right
arrow keys press once together.
you'll hear Voice Over say, Quick Nav on or off.
once its on, you can use individual presses of the right / left arrow to move
the Voice Over cursor from item to item on the screen...
inserted little note here, you need to also understand that whilst PC's screen
readers use up and down arrows to move you about, the Mac uses left / right,
and thinking about this, it does make sense, as this is how sighted folk read.
so the left / right keys will move item by item, be it a chunk of text on the
internet, or icons on a desktop etc.
the up / down arrow keys again individually pressed will cycle through the
elements of the item that you are interacting with based on the rotor setting,
the rotor is a dial or rotory styled switch which adjusts the method of moving
through elements in a given thing.
let me explain, a web-site is made up of headings, links, visited links,
fields, form fields, tables etc. so when you're in Safari the rotor may have,
and you can customise this, headings, tables, links, words and characters
within the rotor. if you want to quickly move between the headings on a web
page you should make sure that the rotor is set to headings, you cchange the
roter setting by pressing together the up and left arrow keys, or the up and
right arrow keys.
once you're on heading, use the up / down arrow key indivually to jump between
headings since this is what your roter is now set to.
say you find the heading you are looking for, you can now right arrow through
the content, imagine though you find a word that Voice Over doesn't quite read
right, and you think, what did it say? change the roter to word, using the up
and right or up and left arrows together, now down press until yu are one word
ahead of the word you wish to have spelt, now change the roter to charicter,
press down arrow and the cursor will move charicter by charicter.
once done simply change the roter bakc to heading or whatever you wish.
this is just one example of how the roter works.
another amazing thing which gets little press is the Item Chooser, which by
pressing control, options, I, will bring up a list of every single item on any
page you are on, be it a finder window or safari window etc.
this has to be one of my favourite features of Voice Over.
with this snazy feature you now have a list of every componant on the screen,
say you are on Amazon, and you've got an item up in front of you, you want to
find the add to basket button, but can't.
press control, options, I, and then type basket, or b, a, s and leave it at
that... the list of items reduces based on the available options with your
letter combination. this is fantastic for finding things you are having trouble
with, or where for example you don't quite know if the item is, add to basket,
put in basket, add to cart, etc.... as you can try a few words until you find
what you want. you don't need to do it in any given order, so even if the link
reads add this dam item to my cart, you could type dam, and the list will
reduce to any option with dam in it.
Quick Nav and the Item Chooser have to be my two main features of Voice Over
and this is how I have successfully last October made the switch to Mac from
being a JAWS PC user for 12 years before that.
hope that this has helped.
Regards,
Neil Barnfather
Talks List Administrator
Twitter @neilbarnfather
TalkNav is a Nuance, Code Factory and Sendero dealer, for all your
accessible phone, PDA and GPS related enquiries visit www.talknav.com
URL: - www.talknav.com
e-mail: - [email protected]
Phone: - +44 844 999 4199
On 8 Jun 2011, at 13:58, Joanne Chua wrote:
hi there,
i'm Joanne, from Australia whom currently on total transit from PC to
Mac. however, i found that the commands and learning the back takes me
too long, and i'm not really sure where to start.
it sounds stupid i know but, may i ask, is there any tips or ways for
me to fast track my learning curves with using voice over?
any suggestion is deeply appreciated.
many thanks
Joanne :)
