Here’s a list of useful Screen Reader commands and tips for my reference and yours. This is a work in progress and I’ll update it as I go.
VoiceOver (Mac) #
Initial setup: #
- Open Safari > Preferences > Advanced; then
- check the checkbox “Press tab to highlight each item on a webpage”.
Usage #
- Open the page you want to test in your web browser (you might favour Safari for VoiceOver).
- Cmd-F5 to turn VoiceOver on.
- Cmd-F5 (again) to turn VoiceOver off.
Get Cmd-F5 for “toggling on and off” into your muscle memory!
Then:
- Ctrl-Option-A to have VoiceOver read the entire page.
- Ctrl to pause VoiceOver, and Ctrl again to resume.
- Tab through items on the page using the tab key. This will move to the next focusable item (button, link, input).
Quickly jump to specific page elements #
- Ctrl-Option-U to open Rotor
- Browse categories using left and right arrows. This includes the Landmarks menu.
- Down arrow to browse within the categories
- press Return to select an item
Tables #
- Navigate to a table using Ctrl-Option-Cmd-T
- It should read a caption and give you info about the size of the table
- Ctrl-Cmd-{arrowkey} to navigate inside the table.