Voiceover and text handeling / navigation

Hello,
Thank you for your workaround tips.
Can you explain more in detail how to use the hotkeys to netagating through different pages e.g. in the Pages app. I always find difficult to go through long documents in Pages.

I’m really eager to buy a MacBook Pro soon. I was testing some of the navigation commands that I used to have trouble with, but I still have a few questions!

First, when interacting with long text in an app, I often want to review it by character, word, and line. Right now, when I interact with long text, VO + right and left arrows let me move by words, and VO + up and down arrows move me by lines. But how do I move by characters? Just using the arrow keys alone doesn’t seem to do anything. I’d prefer not to use the characters rotor to navigate. The Option + arrow keys also don’t seem to work.

Using the rotor feels awkward in some ways. For example, the Lines rotor is out of sync when I move the cursor with other navigation commands. That’s why I don’t prefer using the rotor to navigate text—it’s not very practical.

For text on websites in Safari, it’s different. With Sonoma, we’re able to navigate websites using just the arrow keys. But with standard text, how do you guys review it? I’m basically looking for something similar to NVDA’s review cursor. I wish I had a chance to test this more, but it’s not really possible in a store with just 15 minutes to try it out.

Thanks!

Also, it may be easier when editing text to turn arrow-key Quick Nav off and use left and right arrow to move by character, and Option-left and right arrow to move by word.

TheBllindGuy07,

Thank you for the indepth tips. Using text outside of web pages is what I do the most. I will be trying the slash command in your tip. Nice.
This may go beyond your original focus, As for your selecting text conundrum, here's what I often use in large amounts of scrolling text, in case these help:

In VO:

VO-Shift-c copies the last spoken phrase. This will also cause some edits afterwards since it will copy any VO additional info that is being spoken; like Link, Heading Level Two, collapsed, dimmed, etc.

VO-Shift-a, will select the text currently in the VO cursor, regardless of its source or size. Then Command-c will copy it.

As Tyler alluded to, it pays to check out the standard Mac shortcut keys also, they work in conjunction with VO, QNav on or off.

Command-Shift-down arrow, selects from current keyboard position to the bottom of document. Command-shift-up arrow selects to the top.

Option-shift-right arrow, selects one word at a time. Repeat to add words to selection. use with left arrow instead to remove words from selection, or select into previous of keyboard position..

Option-shift-down arrow, selects one line at a time, ahead of position. Use up arrow instead to remove from selection, or start selecting previous lines instead.

There are many more. If you search on "Mac Sequoia standard shortcut keys" there are hundreds and most work with VO running. I used to use them extensively back when I could still see. One can navigate the entire computer using just a keyboard, even without VO.
Hope this helps someone.

Mac standard shortcut keys
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102650#:~:text=Shift–Command–Down%20Arrow%3A,end%20of%20the%20current%20line.

How about Google Docs? I use Google products/apps for editing text and productivity tasks. I dislike using anything by Microsoft, so their office products have never been my favorite. Google Docs works much better in Google Chrome compared to Safari. I can't edit text efficiently in Google Docs when using Safari. Is there a way to make it work on Safari? I really like the ability to review text with the arrow keys in Safari, which is something I can't do in Google Chrome. Arrow-key text review doesn’t seem to work in Chrome. I also don’t want to keep switching between browsers, as that would cause issues with data importing, cookies, and other things.

This guide might help you with using Google Docs.
https://www.applevis.com/blog/taming-beast-google-docs-macos

Stop interacting with the document.
You'll hear: "Out of page 174, summary:"
VO-left/right to the desired page.
Interact.

Alternatively, use Command-Control-G.
Type in the desire page and press return.
Note, this will stop your interaction and put you back into summary view. A bug appears to be present that puts the VO cursor around the desired page, but not right on it. VO-left/right to the desired page. YOu'll be in the neighbourhood. I will report this bug.

In Pages, you don't use VO navigation to move around the text inside your document. Use native mac OS keyboard commands.

After my PC nearly caught fire and melted, I was forced to use a Mac exclusively to write a Master's thesis, business plans, complex spreadsheets, presentations and other long documents. That was 15 years ago and I've never touched Windows since. You can totally do the same.

Now you know; and knowing's half the battle.

As the subject says. for the longest while I thought I was doing something wrong, but apparently this is a common and recognized problem when VoiceOver for Mac is on.

I'm just as frustrated as the rest of you regarding the sorry state of text editing, in MacOS to be certain, but also in iOS and iPadOS. Apple has a reputation for being the platform of choice for artists. That's true if you're a musician or work in the visual arts. But, for some reason, the language arts are excluded. And you don't need to write poetry or bestselling fiction. Anyone sending an email or doing their homework feels this pain.

This discussion makes me think that what we really need to create is a specification for, and set of documentation describing how, text editing should work with VoiceOver. Then we would be in a position to point at an app or editing control and state objectively how it fails to meet that specification. Currently, there is no specification, at least not a public one. Documentation exists, but without a specification, each app and text editing control varies in behavior. The result is that I'm not even sure where to begin a discussion with Apple, except, perhaps, to suggest that they need to redesign text editing with VoiceOver from the ground up.

We're getting off topic here, but I wanted to thank Brian for plugging that Google Docs article. I'm currently using Google Docs to help work around deficiencies in MS Word. So many things work better in Docs, like excellent support for comments and track changes.

I am a Windows user so don't run into these issues. But here is something you might suggest to Apple to make selecting blocks of text a bit easier.

In Windows using JAWS, JAWS has the ability to put placemarkers within a document or web page. The placemarkers make it very handy to quickly get back to a previously marked location in a document or web page that you are using and moving through a lot.

Anyway, here is how selecting a large block of text is done in Windows using JAWS. First one places a placemarker at the beginning of the block of text to be copied. Then one navigates to the end of the block of text to be copied. At this point, JAWS has a command that is essentially "select from marked location to current position". That makes it very simple to then copy and paste the desired block of text or delete it.

Sometimes seeing how such tasks are done in another OS can give one ideas as to how to do the same task in another OS. So you might suggest such features to Apple.

Very surprised that something as important and ubiquitous as text editing can present such problems. After all, that is a fundamental use for any computer!

--Pete

Confirmed. NVDA does in fact do this as well. I am not sure about VoiceOver for macOS, though. I will say that I am glad these text editing issues were not present back when I was in college. Pretty sure I would not have graduated otherwise ... 😌
Can you imagine? "I'm sorry Professor, the VoiceOver ate my homework "! 😫

I almost never use Page-Up/Page-Down on any operating system. I move by paragraph, code block, heading, line, sentence, etc., depending on the nature of the text being edited and the task to be performed. So I don't notice issues with Page-Up/Page-Down on the Mac. Nor do I use VoiceOver commands significantly to navigate while editing text.

Also, having learned both Emacs and Vim over the years, I can conclude that they make the keyboard interface of every other text editor seem restrictive, incomplete and inadequate. The difference is: they were designed to be used primarily or exclusively with a keyboard, on the assumption that the user was willing to learn to use the commands efficiently - a reasonable assumption for those of us who do a lot of text editing and who do not find it difficult to learn to use such a tool. Primarily graphical editors simply aren't competing on the same grounds, as they're designed first and foremost for people who rely on a pointing device in a graphical environment, with the keyboard interaction being a secondary consideration.

I have Emacspeak running on Linux, but I haven't tried to install it on the Mac yet. There's a relatively new Mac speech server for it, written in Swift. The basic procedure is to get the speech server running first, test it, then load Emacspeak from your Emacs initialization file. That's true regardless of operating system. I would suggest cloning the Git repository and installing from there.

My more general point applies to Microsoft Windows as well: the graphical text editors just don't have the wealth of keyboard commands that the primarily text terminal-based, UNIX editors do. Have a look at a good Emacs or Vim keyboard command reference, or a good tutorial.

It's in the Emacspeak repository, along with all the other speech servers for Emacspeak.

I've read this thread, and it isn't clear what the supposed problems of text editing with VoiceOver for macOS are. One complaint seems to be that Page-Up/Page-Down functions don't seem to have an equivalent on the Mac, but we shouldn't expect those to work in applications that don't divide text into "pages". Moving by one "screen" of content at a time is completely arbitrary, depending on window size, so that wouldn't make much sense either in a nonvisual setting. In any case, scrolling the text in the viewport doesn't move the VoiceOver cursor or the keyboard focus in a Web browser, and I'm reasonably sure that's consistent with normal GUI conventions. You might find it useful to experiment with moving VO cursor to mouse pointer.

Another complaint seems to be that using VoiceOver commands to review text can be awkward (e.g., reading by character using speech only). While this is true in that you need to invoke rotor commands, I've never had to do this while editing text. In a browser, the command to spell the current word would often be sufficient anyway. Since I use a braille display quite heavily, I don't notice these issues so much. As others have pointed out, for text editing, normal cursor movement can be done by line, word, character, etc.

So, I'm not sure what the issues are here that Apple should be addressing. Part of the problem seems to be experienced Windows users who have trouble getting used to the fact that conventions are different in another operating system and that you can't expect your previous way of working simply to be replicated in a different environment with different conventions and a screen reader that takes a different approach to providing access. There may of course be issues that Apple should address, but the discussion here doesn't give clarity as to what those might be.

I gave it a test: in Visual Studio Code, Page-Up/Page-Down move the cursor by some amount - presumably based on the window size. In Cot Editor, Page-Up/Page-Down do nothing. This makes sense, as they're application commands, not screen reader commands, and some applications just don't support them.
They navigate by page in Microsoft Word, which is what one would expect. Microsoft Word has the concept of a page, corresponding to what would be printed.
As far as I know, they're not supported operations in Safari either.

There are many, but I’ll start with my latest mis-feature. Up until 15.1, selecting text has always announced the selected text. However, if you have Apple Intelligence enabled, the announcement “Writing tools in Action Menu” will prevent VoiceOver from announcing your selection.

There is no effective way to work with MS Word reviewing features such as Track Changes and Comments. The absence of this functionality excludes blind persons from participating in many fields.

In MS Word, with your text cursor at a specific location in a large document, Command+Tab over to another application, then back to Word. You will often find that your cursor has moved several pages away from where you left it.

Open a document in Pages and press VO+A to read all. Often, VoiceOver will halt at the top of each new page.

VO+T to announce formatting fails to announce hanging indents. In Safari, VO+T fails to announce formatting altogether. If you're working with a document with color highlighting, the interface for moving to next color change is cumbersome. There is no interface for moving to next strikethrough text at all, as far as I can tell.

There are several problems with announcing dates. How dates are announced varies by voice. Abbreviated dates are announced using an arbitrary century assumption that is often incorrect. Sequences of numbers that look like dates are often incorrectly announced as dates. The only workaround is VO Utility, Verbosity, Text, and set Read Numbers As to Digits, which is a poor solution. Try it yourself.

Spaces at end of line are often incorrectly announced as the final non-space character of that line. This is easily reproduced in Safari if you navigate by character.

Introduced with Sequoia, VoiceOver sometimes fails to announce entire chunks of text. This is open on the AppleVis bug tracker.

There is no consistent way to jump to top and bottom of document or list. It varies by application. Sometimes it’s Command+arrow, sometimes it’s Option+arrow. In MS Word, it’s Command+Home or End.

Sequences of words and punctuation without spaces are often read incorrectly when navigating by word or character, making it difficult to know exactly where your text cursor is located. Such sequences are common in tech writing, and even here on the AppleVis forum.

Despite great advances in AI, VoiceOver still fails to use simple rules of grammar to correctly pronounce heteronyms, which reduces comprehension.

Despite some good add-on tools like VOCR, Text embedded in images or in PDFs composed of images remains an accessibility barrier.

That's off the top of my head.

Some time ago, VoiceOver had a rather unique ability to copy text, and paste the text itself as a snippet on the macOS desktop. I know this had a purpose, but my memory fails me as to why.
I bring it up, because it sounds like text selecting is all kinds of broken nowadays, and I wonder about this particular feature?

This sounds vaguely familiar. If I remember correctly, what was saved to the desktop was an audio recording of VoiceOver speaking.

I thought on this over lunch, and here are a couple of other issues.

TheBlindGuy07 already mentioned reading next/prev paragraph. I'll add that the VO command for this is VO+Shift+PageUp and Down, accourding to the VO+H commands menu. It is inconsistently supported at best. It doesn't work in this text box (it incorrectly moves by line), or in MS Word (where it fails altogether). It does work in Pages and Scrivener.

Speaking of Scrivener, after upgrading to 15.1, moving by paragraph sometimes fails to move to the final paragraphs of a document.

Read next/prev sentence VO+Command+PageUp and Down is also inconsistently supported. I know it works reliably in Scrivener, but I rarely even bother trying to use it in other applications. It does work in this text box, a pleasant surprise.

As for how things got this bad, and why I'm still here, it's rather the proverbial frog in boiling water. I'm always able to work around (or adjust my muscle memory to accommodate) new changes in behavior.

Looking back at my list of issues, some of these problems are very old. I understand Apple has to produce flashy new features. I understand Apple Intelligence was an all-hands-on-deck strategy shift for a large company that took resources away from other projects. But what I can't comprehend is how accessible text editing - the one thing that should be trivial to do accessibly - continues to get worse with each release. I know Apple cares about accessibility. That's why I'm so baffled that these issues persist in release after release.

At this point, someone will inevitably ask if I've reported these issues. The answer is that I've had email communication with Apple accessibility about many of the issues listed here. And there is an open Feedback issue about VoiceOver skipping over whole chunks of text.

Hey Paul,

The thing you are talking about I think is an old iTunes shortcut, where we could convert copied text into an mp3 with something like the Alex voice reading said text aloud.
The thing I am referring to is a little different, and was around a very long time ago (OS X mavericks anyone?). I wish I could remember the hotkeys, but we could, at one point, copy text, say from a webpage, and litterally paste the text onto the desktop, almost like a filename.
Sorry I am not explaining this very well. Just know it was a thing at one point, and it sounds like it maybe is not a thing anymore.
A shame ...

Ok, so the thing I was referring to is an old trick, but I think since Sticky's are a thing it is not really a valid utility anymore. The trick in question is where you can write out some text, like say a note to yourself, in Text Edit, and then copy all of the text and litterally drag it to the desktop.
It is supposed to paste the text itself directly onto your desktop.
Again, since Sticky's are a thing, this is no longer really useful, but it was bothering me that I could not remember how to do this. HaHa.

Pressing VO-Shift-Z will save VoiceOver's last spoken phrase to the desktop as an audio file. While I am aware of this feature, it is not something I've ever used.

Additionally, it is possible to select text and choose Services > Add to Music as a spoken track from the context menu, but I've not used this feature either, so can't comment on its overall utility.

I have another question. Does VoiceOver on macOS have a feature where you can mark a beginning and an endpoint to select text?

Use VoiceOver to select text on Mac.

Historically, I've had problems selecting large chunks of text on Mac. But that article gave me a solution that seems to work, at least in Scrivener. I'll have to try it in Word. The method is: place your cursor at the start of the selection region and press VO+Enter. Use normal VO navigation to move to the end of the region, then press VO+Enter again. That defines the selection. Then Command+C to copy or whatever.