Whether you are dictating or typing, you are going to make mistakes when writing. That is why proofreading is an essential part of any writing project. Whether it’s a simple email to that novel you’ve meant to start.
Proofreading and editing can feel especially challenging when you are blind, but luckily VoiceOver has a wealth of tools to help. This guide begins by teaching you the basics; then we’ll delve into those advanced tools to make you a text editing master. You’ll even find a convent reference guide at the bottom with a list of all the shortcuts you’ll learn.
This guide was written without any changes to the standard VoiceOver Settings. You can customize the way VoiceOver reads while navigating text and we will explain those settings at the end for those interested.
Example Text
If you want to practice what you learn in this guide, but don’t have your masterpiece to edit yet, feel free to download this example document. It’s the narration from Apple’s famous 1997 Think Different ad campaign. I even threw in some typos for you to find and fix.
Rich Text version – For editing in TextEdit
Pages version – For editing in Pages
Important Terms and Concepts
Before you begin, there are some terms you’ll need to know and an explanation on how VoiceOver reads when you move around a document. Don’t skip this section if you are new to VoiceOver and writing.
Text Cursor
Before we jump in, there is a term you should know: Text Cursor.
The word cursor is used a lot in computing. The little arrow on the screen that represents the mouse is the mouse cursor; it lets you know when you click what you are going to be interacting with. VoiceOver has a cursor, visually it is a black box around whatever VoiceOver is reading at the moment, and it represents what VoiceOver is currently interacting with. For example, text on the screen to be read or a button to press.
That brings us to the text cursor. Visually it is a blinking white line. It tells the computer where those letters you type on the keyboard should go. If you were to open up a blank document in a word processor like TextEdit and just start typing, the text cursor would always be at the end of whatever you are writing. But when we begin proofreading or editing a document, we are going to be moving the text cursor around, mostly using the Arrow keys. When we move the text cursor, VoiceOver will describe where we are. If we start typing, that is where those letters will go.
You’ll get a handle on it, but I’ll be mentioning the text cursor in the next section, so it is essential to have an idea of what it is.
Character
The word character in the context of writing means a written letter or symbol. When you are using word processing software, you’ll come across this term a lot, especially in menus and manuals. So keep in mind when you hear the word character, it is referring to any letter, symbols like a period or a question mark, and even spaces are considered characters.
How VoiceOver Reads the Text Cursor
As you proofread your writing, you’ll be moving the Text Cursor all-around your document, and VoiceOver will be speaking and describing where you are. We must understand how VoiceOver chooses to read when we move that text cursor. So I want to make an extra emphasis on the following fact:
When navigating letter by letter or word by word, VoiceOver reads the letters it moves across. So if you pressed the Right Arrow and hear a letter or word, the text cursor is after what you heard or to the right of it. If you pressed the Left Arrow key and hear a letter or word, the text cursor will be before what you heard or to the left of it. So the text cursor location always matches the direction you just pressed.
This is different from how screen readers read on Windows computers work, and you do have the option to change it in VoiceOver’s settings, but for this guide, we will be following the standard-settings, and the descriptions below will match.
Confused? Don’t worry about it. As you practice, this will all make a lot more sense.
The Arrow Keys – By Themselves
If you were to only go through only one section of this guide, this is the one. If you learn to navigate text with Arrow keys only, then you’ll have all the tools you need to proofread and edit. We’ll start with the basics and work our way up.
Video Version
If you would prefer a video version of this next section you can use the following link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyxwhcGADlA&t=1s
Up Arrow Key
The Up Arrow key moves the text cursor up to the previous line one line, and VoiceOver will begin to read that line of text. Press it again, and you’ll move up another line, and VoiceOver will read that one.
When you reach the top, VoiceOver will make a bumping sound effect, say, “Beginning of Text,” and read the top line.
Down Arrow Key
The Down Arrow key moves the text cursor down to the next line, and VoiceOver will be reading that line of text. Press it again, and you’ll move down another line, and VoiceOver will read that one.
When you reach the bottom, VoiceOver will make a bumping sound effect, say, “End of text,” and read the bottom line. The text cursor at that point will be at the end of the line after the last character.
Left Arrow Key
The Left Arrow key moves the text cursor back one character, and VoiceOver reads it out loud. Press it again, and you’ll move to the previous character, and VoiceOver will read that one.
Right Arrow Key
The Right Arrow key moves the text cursor forward one character, and VoiceOver reads it out loud. Press it again, and you’ll move to the next character, and VoiceOver will read that one.
The Arrow Keys – By Themselves Summary
If you were to stop right here, you could technically get around any text file moving just one character or line. But that would be very slow. In the next section, you’ll learn how to move word by word or even paragraph by paragraph.
Adding The Option Key
Now that we know what the Arrow keys do by themselves, we can now learn how to add a modifier key to adjust what they do. An excellent place to start is with the Option key.
Most keyboards have two Option keys. If you start at the spacebar in the center of your keyboard then move two keys to the left, you’ll find the left Option key. If instead, you move two keys to the right of the spacebar, you’ll find the right Option key.
To modify what the Arrow keys do, you’ll need to hold down the Option key while pressing the Arrow keys. Pressing the Option key by itself doesn’t do anything, a modifier key must be combined with another key to perform an action. For example, if you press the letter b key on the keyboard, it types a lower case b, but if you hold down the shift key on the keyboard and press the letter b key, it types a capital B. You just modified the letter b key. In this case, we are going to use the Option key and the Arrows instead of the shift key and the letter b key.
So, now that know that you can use the Option key to modify the Arrow keys, what does that modification actually do?
Option And Right Arrow Key
When you hold the Option key and press the Right Arrow, instead of moving one letter, you move one word to the right. VoiceOver will read the word that the cursor just moved over, and the cursor will be after the last letter in that word. Press it again, and you’ll move to the next word, VoiceOver will read that word, and the cursor will be after the last letter in that word.
Special note about punctuation: Option key and Right Arrow always moves to the next word, which means it does not stop at any punctuation like periods, commas, etc. When it does move over punctuation, VoiceOver will read that punctuation at loud as it passes.
Option And Left Arrow Key
When you hold the Option key and press the Left Arrow, you move one word to the left. VoiceOver will read the word that the cursor just moved over, and the cursor will now be before the first letter in the word.
Special reminder about the text cursor location: In the section “How VoiceOver Reads the Text Cursor,” we mentioned that when you travel to the right of a word with the Right Arrow key, the text cursor will be to the right of the word. Conversely, when you use the Left Arrow key, the text cursor is to the left of the word. This is important to keep in mind, especially when you start deleting characters and words.
Option and Up Arrow Key
When you hold the Option key and press the Up Arrow, you will move to the top of the current paragraph, and VoiceOver will read the first line in that paragraph. The text cursor will be in front of the first word on that line. If you press Option and the Up Arrow key again, you will be taken to the first line of the next paragraph above the current one, and VoiceOver will read the first line of that paragraph.
Note about double-spacing: Depending on your preferences, some people like to double space their paragraphs and will do so by pressing the return key twice. This leaves a black line between each paragraph. When you use the Option and Arrow keys to navigate, you’ll discover that the text cursor will stop at each of these blank lines, and VoiceOver will say “New line.”
Option and Down Arrow Key
When you hold the Option key and press the Down Arrow key, the text cursor will move to the end of the last line of the current paragraph, after any punctuation, and then VoiceOver will read that last line. When you press the Option key and the Down Arrow key the second time, the text cursor will move to the end of the last line of the next paragraph, and Voiceover will read that line.
Adding the Command key
This is the final modifier key we will use to move the text cursor around the document. The Command key is the first key on either side of the spacebar. Outside of the shift key, it is the most used modifier key as you can use it to perform such tasks as Command and P to print, Command and S to save, Command and B to make bold, and many more.
We’ll walk you through all the combinations with the Arrow key below, but just keep in mind the Command key and Arrow keys move the text cursor to the very ends of the document.
Command and Up Arrow
When you hold the Command key and press the Up Arrow you will move to the very top of the document, the text cursor will be placed in front of the first word in the first line, and VoiceOver will read just the first word.
Command and Down Arrow
When you hold the Command key and press the Down Arrow you will move to the very bottom of the document, the text cursor will be placed at the end of the last word in the last line after any punctuation, and VoiceOver will read only that last word.
This is particularly useful if you were proofreading a document and want to continue writing. Since it jumps you right to the end, you’ll be ready to start adding to your document immediately.
Command and Right Arrow
When you hold the Command key and press the Right Arrow, the text cursor will move to the end of the current line, and VoiceOver will read the last word or character.
A lot of the time, you will find that the last character on each line is a space, not a word or letter. This is because most processors don’t want to break a word in half at the end of a line, so it will break at the space that separates the last word of the line from the first word on the next line. Therefore the end of most lines in a paragraph will be a space.
Command and Left Arrow
When you hold the Command key and press the Left Arrow, the text cursor will move the beginning of the current line, in front of the first word, and VoiceOver will read that first word.
Summary
Now you know how to move the text cursor around your document using the Arrow keys with the modifier keys Command and Option. But VoiceOver is packed with additional commands that you can utilize to make your proofreading process even better, plus we haven’t even talked about how to correct misspelled words and delete unwanted words yet! There is still so much to learn before you can call yourself a proofreading master. But first, Here’s a cheat sheet you can use to reference what we just covered.
Arrow Keys Cheat Sheet
| Keyboard Command | Action |
|---|---|
| Right Arrow | Move to next character |
| Left Arrow | Move to the previous character |
| Up Arrow | Move up one line |
| Down Arrow | Move down one line |
| Option Right Arrow | Move to next word |
| Option Left Arrow | Move to the previous word |
| Option Up Arrow | Move to top of paragraph |
| Option Down Arrow | Move to the bottom of paragraph |
| Command Right Arrow | Move to end of line |
| Command Left Arrow | Move to the beginning of line |
| Command Up Arrow | Move to top of document |
| Command Down Arrow | Move to the bottom of document |
Blind Support 