Chapter 4. Working with Text

Reading text

VoiceOver provides many ways to read text. You can read text a word, line, sentence, or paragraph at a time. You can hear words and characters spelled phonetically.

As you read, you can pause and resume speaking by pressing the Control key. If you’re using VoiceOver gestures, tap two fingers on the trackpad.

To read text using VoiceOver commands:

To read an entire document starting from the top (called “Read All”), press VO-A.
When you’re interacting with a document, to read from the VoiceOver cursor to the bottom of the text area, press VO-A.
To read a line, press VO-L. To move to the next or previous line, press VO-Down Arrow or VO-Up Arrow.
To read a paragraph, press VO-P. To move to the next or previous paragraph, press VO-Shift-Page Down or VO-Shift-Page Up.
To read a sentence, press VO-S. To move to the next or previous sentence, press VO-Command-Page Down or VO-Command-Page Up.
To read a word, press VO-W. To hear the word spelled, press VO-W again. To hear it spelled phonetically, press VO-W again. To move to the next or previous word, press VO-Right Arrow or VO-Left Arrow.
To read a character, press VO-C. To hear the character spoken phonetically, press VO-C again. To move to the next or previous character, press VO-Shift-Right Arrow or VO-Shift-Left Arrow.

To read text using VoiceOver gestures:

To read an entire document starting from the top (called “Read All”), flick up with two fingers on the trackpad.
To read from the VoiceOver cursor to the bottom of the text area, flick down with two fingers on the trackpad.
To read a word, line, sentence, or paragraph at a time, press the Command key while touching a finger on the trackpad; repeat until you hear the setting you want to use.

When you use the Down Arrow key to move from one line of text to the next, VoiceOver speaks the line where the insertion point is located. Consequently, if you press the Down Arrow key at the first line of a document, VoiceOver won’t read the line because the insertion point has moved to the next line. To hear the first line of text in a document, press VO-Down Arrow.

Scrolling to content

When more content is available than can be displayed at one time in a window, you can scroll to the “hidden” content. You can use a VoiceOver command or VoiceOver gestures to scroll content without first interacting with the content.

To scroll using a VoiceOver command:

Interact with a scroll area.

Interacting with content areas

To begin scrolling, press VO-Shift-S.
You can’t use other VoiceOver commands while you’re scrolling.
Scroll the content.
To scroll up and down or left and right, press the arrow keys.
To scroll one page at a time, press the Page Up or Page Down key to scroll vertically, and press Shift-Page Up or Shift-Page Down to scroll horizontally.
VoiceOver plays a sound effect when you can’t scroll farther in a particular direction.
To stop scrolling, press the Escape key.

To scroll using VoiceOver gestures:

To hear the number of pages or rows that are visible on the current page, tap three fingers on the trackpad. VoiceOver speaks something like “Page 4 of 15 and Horizontal page 1 of 2.”
To scroll one page at a time, flick up, down, left, or right with three fingers on the trackpad.
In the Trackpad Commander pane of VoiceOver Utility, you can select a checkbox to scroll the content (not the scroll bar) down or up. Normally when you move the scroll bar down or up, the content moves in the opposite direction. When the option is selected, the content moves in the same direction you’re scrolling.

When you interact with content, the VoiceOver cursor automatically scrolls as it navigates the content.

Hearing misspelled words in text

VoiceOver can alert you when it encounters a misspelled word in text.

To hear misspelled words:

When VoiceOver is on, open VoiceOver Utility by pressing VO-F8.
Click Verbosity in the category table and then click Text.
From the “When encountering a misspelled word” pop-up menu, choose an option: Play Tone, Speak Attributes, or Do Nothing.

Hearing punctuation

You can change the amount of punctuation you hear, from none to all.

Using a VoiceOver command:

To open the rotor to verbosity settings, press VO-V.
Verbosity settings include typing echo, punctuation, and text attributes, among others.
Press the Left Arrow or Right Arrow key until you hear “punctuation.” You also hear the current setting.
Press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key until you hear the setting you want: All, Most, Some, or None.

All: Hear all special symbols and punctuation except for spaces. VoiceOver reads a sentence like this, “She turned and stopped comma then started walking again period”

Most: Hear all special symbols but not common punctuation, such as the comma and period.

Some: Hear keyboard symbols and many math symbols, such as + (plus) sign.

None: Hear text as you would normally read it, with pauses for commas and periods.

To close the rotor, press Escape.

Using VoiceOver Utility:

When VoiceOver is on, open VoiceOver Utility by pressing VO-F8.
Click Verbosity in the category table, and then click Text.
Move the VoiceOver cursor to the Punctuation pop-up menu and press the Space bar.
Press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key until you hear the setting you want (None, Some, Most, All), and then press the Space bar.

If you’re using portable preferences on a guest computer at the time you change settings, the settings are saved to the portable preferences and not to the guest computer.

Hearing text attribute changes

You can change how VoiceOver announces changes in text attributes using a keyboard command or VoiceOver Utility.

Using a VoiceOver command:

To open the rotor to verbosity settings, press VO-V.
These settings include typing echo, punctuation, and text attributes, among others.
Press the Left Arrow or Right Arrow key until you hear “text attributes.”
You also hear the current setting.
Press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key until you hear the setting you want: Play Tone, Speak Attribute, Do Nothing.
To close the rotor, press Escape.

Using VoiceOver Utility:

When VoiceOver is on, open VoiceOver Utility by pressing VO-F8.
Click Verbosity in the category table, and then click Text.
Move the VoiceOver cursor to the “When text attributes change” pop-up menu and press VO-Space bar.
Press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key until you hear the setting you want and then press the Space bar.

To hear details about the text style closest to the VoiceOver cursor, press VO-T.

If you’re using portable preferences on a guest computer at the time you change settings, the settings are saved to the portable preferences and not to the guest computer.

Hearing text in dialogs

You can set a preference to control how much description you hear in dialogs. By default, you hear all of the text.

To hear text in dialogs:

When VoiceOver is on, open VoiceOver Utility by pressing VO-F8.
Click Verbosity in the category table and then click Announcements.
Specify what you want to hear using the “Automatically speak text in dialog boxes” checkbox:

To hear all of the text, such as labels, select the checkbox.
To hear only the text to which the VoiceOver cursor moves when the dialog opens, deselect the checkbox.

Hearing the current selection

In the Finder and other applications, you must first select the item you want to use. For example, if you want to open a folder, you must first select the folder. You can use a VoiceOver command to quickly find out what, if anything, is currently selected.

To hear a description of the item selected:

Press VO-F6. If you’re using VoiceOver gestures, tap the trackpad three times.

If nothing is selected, you hear “No selection available.” If text is selected, you hear the text.

Repeating the last spoken phrase

If you couldn’t clearly hear what VoiceOver said, you can repeat the last spoken phrase.

To hear the last phrase repeated:

Press VO-Z.

You can save the phrase to the Clipboard and as an audio file on your desktop.

Selecting text

You can use standard Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts to select text.

Note:You must have set text selection tracking preferences for moving the keyboard cursor and VoiceOver cursor together in VoiceOver Utility. You can turn on and off your cursor tracking preferences.

Turning off cursor tracking

Here are ways to select text:

To select the character to the right or left of the insertion point, press Shift-Right Arrow or Shift-Left Arrow.
To select the word to the right or left of the insertion point, press Shift-Option-Right Arrow or Shift-Option-Left Arrow.
To select the text from the keyboard cursor to the beginning or to the end of the line, press Shift-Command-Right Arrow or Shift-Command-Left Arrow.
To select the text from the keyboard cursor to the beginning or to the end of the text area, press Shift-Command-Up Arrow or Shift-Command-Down Arrow.

You can delete selected text by pressing the Delete key. If you accidentally delete selected text, use the keyboard shortcut Command-Z to undo the mistake. This correction works only if it occurs immediately after the mistake. This shortcut works in many applications and situations, and is worth trying to see if it corrects a mistake.

If you can’t select text using standard Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts, as in an email message that you have received, press VO-Return. Then press VO-arrow keys to read the text you want to select, and then press VO-Return again. The text that was read is highlighted and selected.

To select sections of text that aren’t next to each other, first turn off cursor tracking by pressing VO-Shift-F3. Then move the VoiceOver cursor to the first item and press VO-Command-Space bar. Move to the next item and press the keys again. Repeat until all the text you want is selected.

Hearing what you type

VoiceOver can speak what you’re typing. This is known as a “typing echo” and is useful if you’re not a confident typist or you want to hear confirmation. You can change the level of typing echo you hear using a keyboard command or VoiceOver Utility. Choose from these settings:

Nothing: VoiceOver doesn’t speak what you type.

Characters: VoiceOver speaks each character as you type it (the default setting).

Words: VoiceOver speaks the word you typed when you press the Space bar, a punctuation key, or the Return key (which tells VoiceOver the word is complete).

Characters and Words: VoiceOver speaks each character and completed word.

Using a VoiceOver command:

To open the rotor to verbosity settings, press VO-V.
Verbosity settings include punctuation, misspelled words, and text attributes, among others.
Press the Left Arrow or Right Arrow key until you hear “typing echo.” You also hear the current setting.
Press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key until you hear the setting you want.
To close the rotor, press Escape.

Using VoiceOver Utility:

When VoiceOver is on, open VoiceOver Utility by pressing VO-F8.
Click Verbosity in the category table, and then click Text.
Move the VoiceOver cursor to the “While typing speak” pop-up menu and press VO-Space bar.
Press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key until you hear the setting you want and then press the Space bar.

If you’re using portable preferences on a guest computer at the time you change settings, the settings are saved to the portable preferences and not to the guest computer.

Hearing when caps lock is on

Whenever you press the Caps Lock key, VoiceOver alerts you by playing a tone as you type each uppercase character. In addition, you can have VoiceOver announce when the key is pressed.

To set Caps Lock key notification:

When VoiceOver is on, open VoiceOver Utility by pressing VO-F8.
Click Verbosity in the category table and then click Announcements.
Select the “Announce when the caps lock key is pressed” checkbox.

Completing partially entered words

Some applications, such as TextEdit, display a list of possible words for partially entered text. You can use VoiceOver to see this list and select words from it.

To see a word completion list:

As you type, enter as many characters as you know, and then press F5 or the Escape key (do not use the VO keys with this command).
Press the Down Arrow key until you hear a word that sounds correct.
To hear how the word is spelled, press VO-W-W. To hear the word spelled phonetically, press VO-W-W-W.
When you hear the word you want to use, press the Space bar.
The word you selected replaces the text you typed.

Checking spelling

Many Mac OS X applications, such as TextEdit and Mail, have a preference you can set to check spelling as you type. As you type a misspelled word, it’s underlined.

To check spelling:

Move the VoiceOver cursor to a text area and press VO-Shift-Down Arrow to interact with the text in the text area.
To move the VoiceOver cursor to the first misspelled word and to hear it, press Command-;. To hear the word spelled, press VO-W-W.
Sometimes words that the computer doesn’t recognize are underlined, but they’re not actually misspelled. Continue pressing Command-; until you hear a word that needs to be corrected.
To open a shortcut menu of suggested spellings for the misspelled word, press VO-Shift-M.
At the top of the menu are suggested spellings or alternative word choices. Below those are other options, including a dictionary so you can find the definition of the word.
Navigate to the corrected spelling you want to use and press VO-Space bar to select it.
If you choose a corrected spelling from the menu, the new spelling replaces the old one. If you don’t hear an acceptable correction, press Escape to close the menu, press VO-Shift-F4 to move the VoiceOver cursor to the misspelled word, and then edit the word manually.
To continue to the next misspelled word, press Command-;.
Repeat steps until you have corrected all misspelled words.
When you’re done, press VO-Shift-Up Arrow to stop interacting with the text in the text area.

You can also use the Spelling and Grammar panel, found on the Edit menu in most applications. The panel provides additional options, such as a choice of dictionaries. To display the panel, press Command-Shift-;.