[Athen] VoiceOver gestures for the iPad

Shelley Haven ShelleyHaven at techpotential.net
Sat May 15 22:43:16 PDT 2010


VoiceOver for the iPad responds to a wide range of gestures, far more than listed on the VoiceOver settings page. You can change how VoiceOver reads a page (e.g., continuously) and how it scrolls through text, raise or lower a screen curtain (turns the screen black), and change settings on the fly (e.g., turn speech on/off). The gestures involve various taps and flicks with one, two, three, or four fingers, and a "rotor" as if you were turning a physical knob on the page.

Just as importantly, VoiceOver also changes how the iPad responds to standard gestures, which can get pretty frustrating if you don't know why, for example, you can't turn the pages in an iBook with the usual single-finger flick.

As I was compiling a list of these gestures from various sources, I thought, "Surely someone else has summarized these in one convenient place." Well, duh -- Apple's online iPad User Guide! (Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier!)

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/iPad_User_Guide.pdf

Go to Chapter 16: Accessibility, page 108 for a list of all the possible taps, flicks, and twists and what they do. After experimenting with these, I have to say that I am a lot more impressed with VoiceOver on the iPad as a reading and accessibility tool.

- Shelley

_____________________________
Shelley Haven ATP, RET
Assistive Technology Consultant
www.TechPotential.net





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