Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Hello Turtle power,
I believe you are a little misled or have a misconception of touch screens and the environment of them. As you said, and I really think so, it should be your lack of experience that causes this feeling. To avoid confusion, or to explain in brief how touch screens work, (for blind users), we must first take the time together to explain how things are done there, or to better say it, how tasks are achieved in a touch screen device. Of caurse, you know what a touch screen is, and so you should work with your common sense a little. There are no keys! No letters! No control navigation buttons! Nothing! So? Within the space of this device, which may range from 4 inches to 7 inches, we have to touch the screen and perform slides. These slides have to do with placing your finger on the screen and moving it into a certain direction. It could be right or left, up or down. So, let’s take a short example. You are a powerful windows user, and I suppose you know better than me, what is the key on the keyboard that allows you to browse/explore items one by one on a windows program. That is “Tab”, right? So, the same task on iOS using Voiceover Is reached by placing your finger somewhere on the screen, (preferably near the centre) and sliding with a single finger to the right. Remember, you may touch the screen to get focused on a certain element, then slide to the right, with one finger, to go to the next item. Sliding to the left from where you placed your finger will get you to the previous item, and it is similar to pressing shift+tab. This process is called flicking. It is identical to swiping and the difference relies on the fact that android users/fans use the term “swipe”, while iOS users like to call it “flicking”. But, please, keep in mind that the world of mobile devices nowadays is not as narrow as it seems from the first look/experience. How many types of commands do you use on windows with NVDA? Aren’t nearly 4/5 combinations? Well, let me explain. You can use insert+N to open the NVDA menu. You can use windows+d to jump to the desktop. You regularly use alt+f4 to get out of a window. So, the developer of Voiceover, just like the one of NVDA or jaws, must think of expansion in terms of commands which stand for different tasks. So, similarly to a programmer of Jaws, someone on the Voiceover team must think of a way to read all the text on a Microsoft word document from a certain point, let’s suppose. Familiar user of NVDA or jaws will instantly tell you that, oh, press insert+down arrow and it’ll be alright. OK. Now, I told you in the beginning of the post that there are no keys on a touch screen device, so the developers must dive very deeply into their minds to invent new commands to get things done quickly. I already told you that there is no insert key, alt key or windows key on the touch screen. In addition, Voiceover experts use gestures, gestures which make use of two, three and sometimes 4 finger gestures or commands if you are not accustomed to the term “gesture”. I think I wrote a few sentences ago about putting into practice these kinds of commands by using the available space on your touch screen. So, for example, let’s suppose you want to read a piece of text on the internet, and you want to read all of it from a certain point. Normally in NVDA you would press insert+down arrow or Insert+A. On iOS, you slide with two fingers to the bottom of the screen.
Now, regarding typing on a touch screen device, I will tell you that even the most genius and legendary blind person in the world cannot type as fast as on a physical keyboard, typically one on windows. You have different methods of typing on a touch screen anyway. You can choose standard typing, where you touch the letter and double tap to type it. Tapping is the process of touching the screen and lifting the finger after having located an item. Also, there is Direct typing, where you touch the letter and release the finger to type it. Alternatively, iOS has introduced brail keyboard, which if you have an idea how it works, may considerably improve your speed of typing. As you may know, the keyboard is similar to the one on windows, except for the numbers and symbols which need to be found by changing the keyboard to symbols through a button on the left side of the screen.
Well, this is all I can say for now. If you have another question, you can leave any comment below and I will try to help you to my best abilities.
Cheers!
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