Working with Selectable Text in Mac Apps (especially NVivo)

By Lysette Chaproniere, 10 April, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Although my question is about using NVivo, the software for analysing qualitative data, you might be able to help me based on general knowledge of using the Mac with VoiceOver. I currently work as a research assistant, and I need to analyse some interview transcripts. I need to go through each transcript, and code, or label, pieces of text with themes. This, of course, means I need to be able to select text, and that's where I'm having a problem. When I open one of the transcripts in my project in NVivo and move to the text, VO tells me I'm on a selectable text inside web content. If I move through the text with quick nav turned on, or with Vo + arrow keys, I can navigate through the text as expected. Turning off quick nav and arrowing through the text doesn't work, nor does selecting text with shift + arrow keys. In that respect, it behaves a bit like the quick look interface. Actually, I did get the shift + arrow keys method to sort of work at one point, but it always selected from the beginning of the document, even if I'd moved to a different place. I had a look at the Apple article on selecting text with VO and I can't get the other methods there (the ones using quick nav and the trackpad) to work in any context, including places where the shift + arrow method works fine. Is it possible that I need to change a setting somewhere to make these methods work? I've already tried changing the cursor tracking settings in VoiceOver Utility, for both keyboard focus and mouse pointer. Any other help people can offer with selecting selectable text, either on the Mac in general or in NVivo specifically?

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