Hello Rahul, Gigi, and Others, Rahul, I'm wondering whether your problems with not hearing VoiceOver read with typing echo in Safari is because your verbosity settings under VoiceOver Utility. By default, as Gigi described, most list users do not want to hear every key that you type echoed when you use Safari. In fact, the only time I might want to do this is if I am typing in another language with a keyboard that does not use Latin characters that I don't use very frequently -- such as input of Russian, which uses Cyrillic characters that VoiceOver won't announce unless I switch to a Russian voice, and a very different input keyboard layout. Also, as Gigi stated, I was confused, because I wouldn't use Safari for mail.
In this case, if you want to have everything echoed, you could either set your verbosity level to high on the fly with VO-V, as well as modify your typing echo settings. For more configuration options, open VoiceOver Utility (with VO-F8, where "VO" means you should press the VoiceOver Control and Option keys together with the appended key combinations -- in this case, Control+Option+F8). Navigate to the "Verbosity" category, or use the shortcut Command+2 to select this category. Then, under the "General" tab, you can set the pop up button for "Default Verbosity" to "High". More realistically, I imagine that you won't want this level of detailed announcement for everything. Instead, customize this for whatever text settings you use by navigating to the "Disclosure Triangle" for "Details" and using VO-Space to expand the disclosure triangle. Then navigate to the table and interact. You can separately select settings for text items such as "Text", "Text Area", and "Text Field", navigate to the column for Verbosity setting, and use "VO-Space" to change the value from "Default" to "High" or "Custom…". When you are finished selecting your detailed settings, Stop interacting with the table. You might also want to inspect the settings under the "Text" tab. Select this tab by navigating to it and pressing VO-Space. A number of recent Windows users find it convenient to change the reported position of the cursor from the default value, so that after "When moving the cursor:" the pop up menu button is set to "Speak text to the right of the cursor" in order to mimic the settings they are familiar with under Windows. Use Command+W to close the VoiceOver Utility window when you're done. Traci gave you the link to the section of the VoiceOver Getting Started Guide that deals with working with text, including selection. You can bring up the main guide at any time from the VoiceOver help menu with VO-H. However, another really helpful shortcut for copying is VO-Shift-C, which will copy the last phrase VoiceOver announces to the pasteboard. Then you can paste this into a document, mail message, or other text with Command-V. Remember, in general, to interact with your documents and text before trying to select. I can expand on the description in the VoiceOver Getting Started Guide by summarizing that an easy way to remember how to select text is to combine the keyboard shortcuts for movement in text with holding down the Shift key. So although there is a larger set of shortcuts, you can put together most of the sequences to move that use the Command, Option, and arrow keys, with corresponding sequences to select by simply holding down the Shift key when you execute the commands: command+up arrow move to beginning of the document shift+command+up arrow select to the beginning of the document command+down arrow move to the end of the document shift+command+down arrow select to the end of the document command+left arrow move to the beginning of the line shift+command+left arrow select to the beginning of the line command+right arrow move to the end of the line shift+command+right arrow select to the end of the line option+right arrow move one word to the right shift+option+right arrow select one word to the right option+left arrow move one word to the left shift+option+left arrow select one word to the left option+up arrow move to the beginning of the paragraph shift+option+up arrow select to the beginning of the paragraph option+down arrow move to the end of the paragraph shift+option+down arrow select to the end of the paragraph up arrow move up from present position shift+up arrow select upward down arrow move down from present position shift+down arrow select downward Some other things that are helpful to know: you can add or delete from selected content by continuing to hold down the shift key and using the movement sequence commands. For example, if I am selecting text it might be easier for me use the down arrow key to start my selection for a sentence that begins in the middle of a line, but when I reach my last selected line I could be in the middle of a word or sentence. So if I continue to hold down the shift key and press the right arrow key, I'll select everything to the end of that last line. This also means that you can back up with your arrow key selections while you continue to hold down the shift key. If I press the down arrow key 5 times, and I only meant to select 4 more lines, I can up arrow once to move my selection region back. Just as a warning, this can have odd effects, since selections can be made in either direction: if you up arrow past your original starting point while you hold down the shift key, you will be selecting text in lines before your starting poiint. And you can add to or delete from your selection by word, character, etc while you continue to hold down the shift key -- any of the above selection combinations with Option and Command keys will work. To get out of selection mode, just move your arrow keys without holding down the shift key. Finally, it can be useful to check your selection with VO-F6 (Describe the selected item) while you get the hang of things. Note that the shortcuts I listed are not VoiceOver specific -- they're used by all Mac users. They work for text editing on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad with a paired Bluetooth keyboard. (Of course, you can't yet check text selection with VO-F6 on an iOS device.) I've written them in pairs so that the second line to select the text starts with "Shift" and then exactly repeats the key sequences in the first line movement command. I don't actually type the commands in this order if I'm giving instructions -- I type something like "use Command-Shift-Down Arrow to select text from your current position to the end of the document", and that's closer to the actual order in which I press the keys. Then you can copy with Command-C and paste with Command-V. Quite a lot of this information is in the list archives. Veteran list members will recognize that the last section of this post is from a post titled "Moving and Selecting in Cocoa Apps [was Re: lines of text]" that I sent to the list two and half years ago. The secondary Mail Archive site for this list is wonderful way to quickly find solutions to questions, and is easy to navigate in any browser (including purely Windows based configurations like Internet Explorer, for those list members reading this list who do not have a Mac.) I keep a link to the Mail Archive web pages for this group: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/ You can search by subject, author, date range, and use wild cards and or Boolean arguments in the text box. Type in your search terms and press return to get a Google like list of links to matches with short descriptions. Activate a link with VO-Space to read the post. If you want to read up or down the thread to understand the context of the discussion, use access key combinations Control-p for previous messages in the thread and Control-n for the next message in the thread. For browsers other than Safari, change the access key prefix from "Control" to the appropriate key (e.g., "Alt" for Internet Explorer; "Alt+Shift" for Firefox, etc.). You can also read the list from the main page, which by default displays in threaded mode. For a more detailed explanation of using the Mail Archive web for searches, see my linked post: • Suggested checks for using access keys and searching the list archives [was Access keys not working] http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries%40googlegroups.com/msg42373.html I found this by typing into the search text box: from:Esther searching archives HTH. Cheers, Esther On Oct 9, 2011, at 13:13, Eugenia Firth wrote: > Hi Rahul. > I have a question because I am having some trouble understanding why you are > having your difficulties. First, I have never been entirely happy using the > Internet to do email. I have done it, but have, on the whole found it less > satisfactory than using a program dedicated to email production. I, > therefore, would not use Safari to type email. I tried it with Internet > Explorer and Jaws, and got it done, but with more difficulty. So, I guess my > question to you is if there is some reason you prefer to use an Internet > browser for your email instead of using Mail. > > I have not had your experience of VO not echoing keystrokes. In fact, I > turned it off because in both Jaws and Vo, I can't stand the computer to tell > me every keystroke. However, I have gotten this feature to work in both > screen readers. > > Regards, > Gigi > > On Oct 9, 2011, at 3:04 AM, Rahul Bajaj wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> I have been using my MacBook for the last 3 months. >> And, To be honest, my experience so far has been very, very frustrating. >> Some of the problems that I've faced so far are: >> >> 1. VoiceOver doesn't read anything as I type, so I can't use it for >> sending messages and emails. >> It reads every character as I type on TextEdit, but it doesn't read >> anything when I type on Safari. >> I've changed the typing echo to 'characters and words', but it's still >> not reading anything. >> >> 2. I don't know how to select anything. >> How can I select something and paste it somewhere else? >> >> 3. VoiceOver doesn't read CAPTCHAs. >> There is an app which does this for visually impaired people who use >> Firefox, but VO doesn't work with Firefox. >> >> So, in general, I am not as comfortable with VO as I am with JAWS. >> The worst part is that I've posted these questions so many times, but >> no one has ever been able to give a satisfactory reply. >> >> I really find it hard to understand how people say that they are far >> happier with VO than they were with JAWS. >> I mean, how can you enjoy using a screen reader which cannot even >> perform some of the most basic functions? >> Please share your views on this matter. >> >> Cheers, >> Rahul >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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