Hi Mike,
These are all personal preference questions. Some prefer the keyboard in
landscape mode. For me, hearing VO quit reading or ducking under music to
announce portrait or landscape drives me nuts, so I locked it in landscape
mode by going into the app switcher by double tapping home, doing a three
finger flick right, and toggling the "rotation lock" setting found on the
lower left.
Keyboarding suggestions will vary widely. Some find standard typing faster.
I once read a blog post suggesting keyboard entry using the thumbs. I was
all thumbs wen I attempted that. As soon as touch typing was introduced I
never looked back. My keyboarding technique can vary massively -- for
example I might be walking down the street with my left hand consumed with
the harness of my 80 pound golden and send a text message. This is
accomplished by placing my thumb on the left side near the bottom and
securing the right side with my bird and ring finger while the back is held
against my body. I might remove my bird finger temporarily and hold it with
two fingers so as to facilitate easier access to keys on the left such as
"a" and "q", but generally I can hold it securely and text reasonably
quickly while walking and gripping with three fingers and my shoulder. The
4S has rendered a lot of this acrobatics unnecessary because nearly all
keyboarding dialogs include a dictate button to the left of the space bar,
and for me this dramatically reduces data entry time in most instances.
Best regards.
Geoff
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Busboom" <m...@busboom.at>
To: "Mac OSX & iOS Accessibility" <mac-access@mac-access.net>
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: Data entry on the iPhone 4 with OS5
As usual, Esther, your response was delightfully thorough and instructive.
One question I forgot to ask in my original note was about the orientation
of the iPhone when entering data. Should it be oriented to landscape or
portrait? Along similar lines, does the iPhone need to be lying on a
surface or can I hold it while entering data?
Thanks so much, to you, Sarah and everyone else who is helping me.
Mike
On 17,Nov,2011, at 8:51 PM, Esther wrote:
Hi Mike,
Sarah's explanation of the behavior of the insertion point position
describes how to tell where you are positioned in a text entry, and also
which characters will be removed when you press the delete key, but I'll
try to answer your specific questions by interleaving replies. You might
want to check the earlier podcasts at the Vision Australia web site (for
the iPhone 3GS, for example), because the concepts of keyboard entry
arise very early, and they probably didn't redo podcasts to have separate
episodes for the iPod Touch, iPhone 4, etc.
Other than this, while there probably are podcasts that demonstrate this,
I can't quickly think of one. (Of course, Mike Arrigo's podcasts tend to
cover everything, so you could start there *smile*.) One podcast
demonstration that might help you out is Kevin Chao's podcast on "Text
selection. Copying and pasting" at:
feed://kevinchao.podbean.com/feed/
It's actually more complicated than what you're asking about, but the
second half of the podcast describes using the web rotor to move your
insertion point by characters and words, and what VoiceOver announces.
Michael Busboom wrote:
MB: 1. How can a document that is currently being written checked for
errors? In other words, must one somehow leave the keyboard app in
order to do this?
Esther: If you are typing with the virtual keyboard in the bottom half of
the screen, you can leave the keyboard up, but move your hand to the top
half of the screen and set the rotor to either "characters" or "words".
Do this by placing thumb and forefinger on the screen, with a slight
separation, and twisting clockwise (or counter clockwise), as though you
were turning a dial. Some people find it easier to use their index finger
and middle finger, and twist these to make the turning gesture.
MB 2. When hitting the Delete button, how does one determine whether
the first character of the text has just been deleted or whether the
cursor is at the end of the text, and deleting from right to left is
occurring?
When you're in a text field and double tap, you'll hear VoiceOver
alternately say "insertion point at start" or "insertion point at end".
The way to check your insertion point in the middle of a document is to
set the rotor to either "characters" or "words" and then to flick down
(to move forward) or flick up (to move backwards). VoiceOver will
announce the character or word that you just moved over.
Let's take an example. You're in the Notes app and just typed "Hello
world", and want to review your entry. Currently you're at the bottom of
the document. You double tap and hear VoiceOver say "insertion point at
start", so the insertion point has just been moved before the H in
"Hello". If my rotor is set to "characters", then each flick down moves
the insertion point one character to the right. VoiceOver announces each
character as you move the insertion point over it, so the direction that
you move counts! If I'm at the start of the phrase, I won't be able to
flick up to move to the left of the H in "Hello". If I flick down to
move by one character to the right, I hear "H" as the insertion point
moves from before the "H" to a position between the "H" and the "e". If
I flick down again, I hear "e" as the insertion point moves over the "e"
to a position between the "e" and the first "l" in "Hello". But, had I
instead flicked up to move by one character to the left,
I
would have moved back over the "H" to my starting point, and VoiceOver
would have announced "H" as I moved over this letter from the other
direction.
If I keep flicking down in an editable field, with my rotor set to
character, I hear all the letters announced as the insertion point moves
over the letters from left to right: H, e, l, l, o, space, w, o, r, l,
and d. Now, suppose I wanted to edit and change "world" to "word". After
I flicked down and moved past the "l" of "world" and hear it announced,
my insertion point is between the "l" that I just heard VoiceOver
announce, and the final letter "d". Double tapping the "delete" key
deletes the letter to the left of the insertion point. If I double tap
the "delete" key to the right of the "m" key and just above the "return"
key in the bottom right corner of the virtual keyboard, I'll delete the
"l", and VoiceOver will announce the new word, "word" (instead of
"world"). My insertion point is still before the final letter ("d") in
the phrase. I can flick down to move my insertion point to the end of the
text.
The same process works to edit phrases by word. If my insertion point is
at the start of the phrase, and I've set my rotor to "word" instead of
"character", then flicking down moves my insertion point one word to the
right. I hear VoiceOver say "Hello". The insertion point is just after
the final "o" in "Hello". Pressing the delete key would have VoiceOver
announce the deleted letter ("o"). If I now flick up to move left by one
word, VoiceOver announces "Hell", and the insertion point is placed to
the left of the word (at the beginning of the phrase, before the "H").
If I want to edit "world", and assuming it were near the end of a
sentence (instead of being the second word) I could flick down to move
through the sentence by words. Then, when I was just before "world", I
could change the rotor from "word" to "character" and flick down to hear
the individual characters announced, and make my correction. Or, more
likely, I would flick down and hear "world" announced,
an
d decide that I wanted to edit that word. So I would change my rotor to
"character" instead of "word", and start flicking up to move to the left.
My insertion point is always placed before or after the character (or
word) I have just navigated past. Since I navigated to the right
(flicked down) by word, it is after the final letter "d" in "world" --
the word I just heard VoiceOver announce. If I flicked up (to navigate
to the left) before switching the rotor to "characters", the insertion
point would be placed at the end of the previous word (e.g., it would be
all set to announce the "Hello" with the next flick up).
MB: 3. Does anyone know of a podcast where this topic is handled in
greater depth? I only started using my iPhone yesterday, and I really
can't complain too much. I only encountered the keyboard entry problem
when I unsuccessfully tried to sign in to a website. :)
Esther: There probably is a podcast that covers this, but I can't think
of one offhand. You might have an easier time reviewing entries with a
paired Bluetooth keyboard. I'm going to paste in the question and
response I gave to a much earlier list post by Matthew Chao last year.
He wrote:
Finally, I have an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Is there any way I can get
VO to just say words while on the keyboard, not repeating characters,
while on the phone itself, repeat characters and words?
Esther: The issue you have stems from the fact that VoiceOver is
announcing both your context location and your specific items when you
navigate through text with a keyboard. If you only want specific words
spoken, hold down the Shift key to select entries as you navigate -- then
only the items that you select with the keyboard will be spoken. If you
press Shift+Option+Right Arrow, for example, you will move your insertion
point to the right by one word (Option+Right Arrow), and also select it
(since the Shift key was pressed). VoiceOver will announce that word. If
you keep holding down the Shift and Option keys while tapping the Right
arrow key, you'll hear VoiceOver announce those words, too. If you hold
down the Shift key and just tap the Right arrow key, you'll be selecting
characters, and VoiceOver will announce the character. You can select
from present point to end of line (Shift+Command+Right arrow) or to the
beginning of a line (Shift+Command+Left arrow). You c
an
also move (and select) by lines by using your Up and Down arrow keys.
To get out of selection mode, just move your cursor (e.g. press right or
left arrow) without holding down the shift key. The keyboard shortcuts
were posted to this list earlier, and can be found in the archives.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
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