I wanted to reorder status menu items such ass battery, Wi-Fi, and Spotlight search by using the VoiceOver drag and drop; or locking the mouse and trying to drag that way; but I couldn't. What I found out is that sighted people drag those when holding the Command button. What is an accessible way for us to do it, or is it, well, inaccessible?
Comments
Methods
The VoiceOver Way
If memory serves, go to system settings, control center. This is where you can add or remove items, determine when they show up (specific icons only), etc.
I, believe, that the order that you enabled them is the order they will show up in the system status bar. So, for example, if you choose battery, then Wi-Fi, battery will be to the left of Wi-Fi, and vice versa.
I hope that makes sense.
The Standard Way
This next way, should, be doable, but will take a little effort. First, make sure mouse tracking is enabled. I think this is done with VO, plus shift, plus F3. Next, navigate to the system status bar where your battery, Wi-Fi, etc. icons should be. Left or right arrow, or VO left or right arrow to the icon you want to move. Hold command, and then use your trackpad, or mouse, and click and hold, and swipe left or right, or move the mouse left or right, and then release click.
HTH.
I've Never Managed It
Sadly, this is one area where the VO support just isn't there. You can't rearrange or delete menu extras. You also can't customise the tool bars of applications such as Safari. For whatever reason, the drag-'n'-drop commands that should help just don't. If you ever figure it out, I'd love to hear about it.
I believe you can hold VO+comma and select a modifier
Instead of Just marking an item to be dragged, perform the shortcut as mentioned, and you should see an option to select a modifier. Then, press enter.
But... I just tried this on my own Mac, and voiceover says something like, 28% Battery is not draggable. VoiceOver will not drag item that has press action.
Interacting with the menu item didnât help anything either.
Sounds like things have changed in recent macOS releases
Because I'm fairly certain in Monterey, I could do The VoiceOver Way, that I mentioned in my last reply above. Has anyone tried my second suggestion I mentioned above? Seems like that should work, since it is more or less the way sighted people do it.
Havenât tried it yet
I can say that performing a mouse down command and not using the trackpad causes control center to open, in this case, to the battery menu, or whatever status menu you are focused on.
I have to agree that a lot of things worked better in Monterey.
I almost remember doing the method I described above, and it actually working.
Although VoiceOver says it canât drag and drop things that have the press action, I have seen It drag things that are labeled as buttons.
Not confusing at all, right?
I feel like this is one of those areasâŠ
I feel like this is one of those areas where an actual mouse would be beneficial. And no, macOS is not confusing at all. Now if you will excuse me, I will go back to my humble PC, or I don't have to deal with all of this nonsense. đđ
Nothing works
I tried performing mouse down/up to drag and drop, as well as VoiceOverâs standard drag-and-drop feature. I also tried doing it the sighted way, but none of that actually worked. The sighted way might be possible if I spent an hour or two figuring it out, but nobody has the patience to do that just to say, âOkay, I won!â So yeah, it's impossible and inaccessible with VoiceOverâjust like the toolbar customization.
See, it's things like thisâŠ
See, it's things like this that make me not regret pulling away from macOS.
So ... how'd you do this on Windows?
Although I do think Windows generally has a much more utilitarian keyboard-first UI, I'm not sure I'd want to be in the position of having to do drag-'n'-drop on Windows either, where the screen reader support basically just doesn't exist at all. There is one major case where I've found this to be necessary, but it was a long time back; nowadays it's things like rearranging lists on web pages and such like, which though difficult tend to be feasible with VO.
The bigger issue is that the model that VoiceOver uses just isn't compatible with the menu-extra rearranging case. I mean, how do you generalise a problem like that? There are all sorts of places where it seems Apple just raises the white flag instead of solving the problem properly. Other examples I can think of are rearranging columns in a table view, stacks, moving books out of the Books app onto your desktop, and other fundamentally visual "experiences" where there's just no "non-visual" metaphor that works. This is all a regrettable byproduct of ideological obsessions by Apple over mouse interactions where the entire operation has to be visually consistent. Remember that for a long time you couldn't atomically move a file from the keyboard, only copy-then-trash-then-delete a file or folder, which was less efficient. When Apple added the Command-Option-V to move, so that you could Command-C to copy, we got that most basic functionality, but without the same intuitiveness of the Windows cut-and-paste approach, because Windows simply makes it possible to move a file without maintaining visual consistency. There are many things to like about the Mac platform, but this generally is not one of them.
I don't get it...
I donât get why Apple doesnât implement another way of doing the same thing⊠So, why canât we just hold the Command and Option keys and reorder items in a list with the arrow keys? That way, sighted people are happy, and so are we.
Or, if Command + Control + Shift + T adds an item to the Dock, why canât we remove it using the same shortcut on a Dock item instead of dragging it out or using the Options menu? That takes way more time than just a keyboard shortcut.
I donât get itâhaving the best battery life and performance in a laptop but failing to implement these little things?
Keyboard versus Mouse
It's been said that macOS is more of a point & click UX, whereas Windows is more of a keyboard-first approach. Having said that, do the sided folks who use macOS have the same problems with dragon drop? Or is this specifically a VoiceOver issue?
Asking because, if this is VO specific, I am wondering if there is some kind of workaround for situations like this? Apologies if this is beating a dead horse, it's been about a year since I touched macOS, unfortunately.