IOS Voice Over Tips. Article

The two apps I always recommend are SeeingAI and BeMyEyes. Seeing AI can read documents, identify money, lookup products by barcode, and can integrate with Siri “Hey Siri, read document”.

BeMyEyes connects them to a sighted helper (either from a group of trusted friends/family, or a random stranger) who looks through the phones rear cameras and can dialog with the blind user “Do you see my keys?

I dropped them in here somewhere.”

Siri is reasonably good (turn on options to hang up calls, announce calls, auto route calls to speakerphone).

Voiceover is powerful, but like all screen readers has a learning curve. in the Settings menu under accessibility, then voiceover, there is now supposed to be a tutorial. I haven’t tried it. I learned voiceover by reading a table of all possible gestures and their corresponding actions. A lot of things can be done by getting to the item you want then swiping one finger up or down to see if there is a hidden context menu. For example, if you are in the “latest episode“ section of your podcasts, you can get to the play button for a podcast in the list, then swipe up or down to access various hidden menus. For example, in the “latest episodes“ list, swipe with one finger from left to right to get to the podcast you want, swipe one more time until you are on the “play“ button, then swipe up two times with one finger to get to the “more” menu. Then swipe right several times to get to the item in the menu that you want, such as “download,” or “add to queue.” Maybe your “mark as played” option is in that menu, or it could be in the context menu instead of the more menu. For scrolling, you use 3 fingers at the same time to swipe up or down. Often you can use three fingers to swipe from left to right or right to left in order to do the same thing that swiping left and right with one finger used to do for you without voiceover. For some items, you can delete them by using 3 fingers to swipe left, then use one finger to swipe right to get to the delete button that has now appeared. Double tap with one finger to activate the delete button. You should also learn to use the rotor on voiceover. You put your thumb and forefinger on the screen then twist your hand as if you are turning up or down the volume on an old-fashioned radio dial knob. Alternately, you can access the rotor by swiping left with the finger of one hand while swiping right with the finger of the other hand. You can do this rotor action until you get to the setting you want, such as speaking rate. Now, having activated that setting, if you swipe up or down with one finger, you will then adjust the setting that you chose on the rotor. In the accessibility settings under voiceover, you can choose what you want on your rotor and in what order. If the VoiceOver gestures on iPhone are being a pain, look in Accessibility (found in the settings menu) and locate Spoken Content. It’s a controller that can be turned on and off to read the screen for example when an ebook is opened. Tip: also found in accessibility, in the Touch menu, there is an option called Back Tap, it’s the last option inside the a touch menu. These are two shortcuts that can activate a command when tapping the back of the phone with a finger. I have set the double tap to active the Speak Screen controls. So when I double tap the back of my phone, it starts reading what’s on screen. You can also make the icons of the phone larger. That option is found in the Display section in Settings.