Tips for accessing Google products for work on a Mac using VoiceOver

Hey everyone,
Hope you’re all doing well. I’m posting on behalf of a friend who recently started a new position where the company uses Google Workspace for everything. She’s using a MacBook with VoiceOver, and while she’s become very comfortable and efficient using Microsoft products over the years, Google is proving a little bit more frustrating.

At the moment, Gmail and some of the other Google apps in the browser feel pretty finicky with VoiceOver. She mentioned there’s a lot of arrowing around, interacting with groups using VO + Shift + Down Arrow, then right-arrowing through controls, and overall it just doesn’t feel nearly as smooth or efficient as the Microsoft workflow she’s used to.

She’s starting to feel like she may not have much choice but to adapt to it, so I wanted to ask whether anyone here regularly uses Google Workspace with VoiceOver on macOS.

Are there better navigation strategies, keyboard shortcuts, browser recommendations, or workflows that make things more manageable? Does it eventually “click,” or is it mostly a matter of learning the quirks and working around them?

I haven’t been able to find much online specifically about using Google products efficiently with VoiceOver, so I thought it would be worth asking here and hopefully starting a useful discussion for others as well.

Thanks in advance — any tips or experiences would be really appreciated.