Can't read continuously by panning display on Mac OS

By CuriousNetEntity, 28 July, 2021

Forum
Braille on Apple Products

I don't understand braille display functionality on Mac OS Voiceover. On iOS if I keep pressing the right panning thumb key on my braille display focus goes to the next paragraph or item when I finish reading through the current one. On the Mac panning stops at the end of the paragraph or item until I press the move right command. It is so incredibly inefficient and annoying! Why would anyone want their display to behave in that manner. I hated it when JAWS did that and I hate it when Voiceover does.

Is there some way to change the display's behavior so I can easily read through articles on webpages without all that unnecessary stopping and key pressing?

I swear screenreader developers have never tried using a braille display. I guess they could use the display for reading code while it behaves as it currently does. That is the only time I might want panning to stop at the end of a line.

Please don't suggest I use the continuous auto-advance. I must not read at a consistent enough pace, because trying to use auto-advance stresses me out and doesn't work well.

I have another totally unrelated issue.
Oddly, when I connected my braille display via bluetooth all the default commands were in place, but when I connect via USB almost all of the command assignments have gone missing. It's tedious to manually reassign them but I can do it.

Any help would be much appreciated. If anyone else hates this behavior, please, let Apple know.

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Comments

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Saturday, August 21, 2021 - 23:57

Hi!
Take a book you want to read.
Reformat the text file to size of your braille display.
For example, your display has 40 cells.
Make lines less or equal 40 cells.
Then emulate key down arrow by pressing downw the button on your display.
Try it!
I am sure you can read this way.
Cheers!

By layly on Tuesday, September 21, 2021 - 23:57

I believe I've had this problem in Books and it turned out that the focus was in the paragraph rather than the page/display area so VO + shift + up-arrow might be all it takes. I'm afraid I'm not certain though since I haven't used my braille display with the mac for a while because of behaviours like this.