Zooming In and Out with VoiceOver On

By Misty Dawn, 26 December, 2012

Forum
Low Vision Accessibility on Apple Products
I am a VoiceOver user but have some usable vision. I am interested as to whether you can zoom in and out, e.g., with the camera or on Safari, with VoiceOver still on. I know you can do it with VoiceOver off by placing two fingers on the screen and either moving them together or apart, but I don't know if anything like this can be done with VoiceOver still on.

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Comments

By Shersey on Friday, December 21, 2012 - 22:47

I'm not sure what to tell you beyond that, but their might be something in the manual about running VoiceOver and Zoom at the same time. I know for sure that you can run both at the same time with iOS 6, however. The same can be said for VoiceOver and Guided Access, I think. By the way, you can find a link to the manual you'll need in Safari's bookmarks. Hope this helps, Shersey

By Dave Nason on Friday, December 21, 2012 - 22:47

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Yes you can use VoiceOver and Zoom at the same time in iOS6. Go to Settings>General>Accessibility>Zoom and switch Zoom on. To use it you double-tap with three fingers to toggle it on and off. Double-tap and hold, and drag your fingers up or down to zoom in or out, again with three fingers. When zoomed in, you move around the screen with three fingers too. The gestures are the same with VoiceOver turned off. Any problems let me know.

By Jakob Rosin on Friday, December 21, 2012 - 22:47

Random sighties have confirmed me that it works on the camera. Not shure about safari.

It makes sense that it would, not least because it's a stock iOS app, but also because Zoom is a magnifier that is supposed to, well, magnify whatever you zoom in on. By the way, to mute speech, you need to triple-tap with three fingers, and to turn the screen curtain on, you need to quadruple-tap with three fingers. I'm not sure why you would want to do this, when you want Zoom for magnification, but there you have it. Perform these gestures again to turn them off, respectively. The double-tap with three fingers has been taken over in Zoom when VoiceOver is on to Zoom the screen, I think. Thanks, Shersey

By Larry Thacker Jr. on Friday, December 21, 2012 - 22:47

Whether one can use the zoom feature that is not related to accessibility in various applications while voiceover is running. I have not found a way to do this. The workaround is to turn VO off by tripple-tapping Home, performing the desired zoom in/out, then turning it back on.

By Misty Dawn on Monday, January 21, 2013 - 22:47

Guys, I'm not talking about using the Zoom feature under Accessibility. I'm talking about zooming in with the camera app. You can do it with VO off by putting two fingers on the screen and spreading them apart of putting them together. This will either zoom in or out. However, I don't know how to zoom WITH THE CAMERA in and out with VO still on. Again, does anyone know how to do this?

Oh sorry. I just did it in the camera on my iPad there now. There doesn't seem to be a pinch to zoom as such, but if you put VO focus on the view-finder (I.e. the main window in camera), there is a zoom in the roter. Go to zoom and swipe up or down to zoom in or out. Hope that does the trick for you.

By MarkSarch on Monday, January 21, 2013 - 22:47

Hi, I think it is not possible VoiceOver doesn't allow realize this action, friends of nine couldn't do it even my family whenever want to soon out some image or take a picture even they couldn't, they need turn off VoiceOver first and then the gesture soon out to do it. I have tried it without having good results

By ios on Sunday, February 21, 2016 - 22:47

The solution to the problem: Turn off the Voice-over with three clicks of the home button.
do the Pinch gestures .
turn on the Voice-over with three clicks.
And the growing possibility now appears possible match with sliding up and down from 0 to 100

By daaron on Thursday, December 21, 2017 - 22:47

With voiceover on, use the rotor (rotate with two fingers) until Zoom is selected. Works in Maps, for instance.

Then, a quick swipe down or up to zoom in or out respectively. Voiceover announces the zoom factor (e.g., 16x).