Hi! Does anyone have any tips for using Google Sheets with VoiceOver in MacOS? I'm working with VoiceOver more and more as my vision continues to get worse, and while I've been making great progress, I find Google Sheets almost unusable. I've enabled the screen reader support and have been able to, ever so carefully, make minor edits to documents, but I just can't seem to get things like navigation to work consistently. I'm hoping that I just don't know what I'm doing and someone will have some insight that will really help. One thing that's very annoying and confusing is finding out where I'm at in the actual sheet at any given time. I know there are keybaord shortcuts specific to Google Sheets itself that can announce row and column coordinates, as well as other shortcuts like that, but they seem to be in conflict with MacOS shortcuts. I know I could use the VO shortcut to ignore the next keypress, but do I have to do that every single time? Is there no easier way to do things?
I've heard from some people that Google Sheets is better on iOS and iPadOS with a keyboard. Has that been your experience?
Comments
Braille support
Turn on Braille support, not just screen reader support. It doesn't matter if you don't have a Braille display. Also yes you'll have to pass through every time. I recommend Windows if you're going to use Google Suite heavily. Sadly there's no way around it.
Yes
You can always use capslock as VO modifier, passthrough will just make the experience infinitely worse than it already is.
I was about to post a similar comment before but never submitted it, but sadly it's the honest truth, don't expect daily productivity with google web apps, or any rich complex advanced web app on mac with voiceover. Windows sadly is the way to go here. This is how I was so happy about my one month experience with asahi linux because orca is way better at this as buggy and unfunded it is compared to VO.
You can just use a windows VM for that, it's a legitimate use case for us as blind users of windows VM on mac. That's what I do.
As for what software to use, threads here are plenty and there are discussions about the advantage of the most popular ones.
I hope it helps. I know it's not the answer you or anybody wants, but it's fact. I am not saying GSuite is impossible to use, but it's often painful. It may be accessible, but it's not the best in terms of usability and day to day conveniance.
I would ask on multiple forums
There is a comment on the
Mac visionaries google group that it is accessible. does that mean those on AppleVis are wrong? No people may have different experiences with it. so it is a good idea to get as much knowledge as possible. I've also heard from other blind people that google docs are accessible and that wasn't on the Mac visionaries list.
@TheBlindGuy07
No, thank you–That's exactly what I need to hear. I need honest, practical feedback. I'm always trying to figure out better ways of working around things and all that, but at the end of the day, I want to know what is realistic. When you say it is better on Windows, is that mostly a function of the Google-specific keyboard shortcuts not being in conflict with the OS, or are there other aspects to it that I haven't considered? I've not used Windows or Linux in several years now, and never a VM on MacOS, so I'm just trying to get a feel for whether it's worth exploring that over moving a lot of my documents to other applications. Also, do you have any input on the iOS and iPadOS versions of Google Sheets as compared to the browser version?