NVDA & Google Docs Accessibility

Hello. In this 9 minute video I demonstrate the Accessibility menu in Google Docs.

I use the screen reader NVDA and I focus on how to move around headers, graphics and links that are in a document.

The video includes a full set of subtitles but if you prefer to read a transcript, please find one below

Start of Video Transcript

Hello everyone. It is James from the Visual Impairment Team in Devon.

In this video I am going to demonstrate part of the Accessibility menu in Google Docs using the screen reader, NVDA.

Before I do anything else, we need to change the shortcut key that starts NVDA because the same shortcut is used a lot in Google Docs.

The standard shortcut key that starts NVDA is Ctrl + Alt + N.

So, to change the shortcut key, press Windows key and D to get on the desktop.

Now press the n key until we are on NVDA. Now press the shift and F10 keys in order to open the context menu .

Press r to open up “properties”, press alt and k in order to change the shortcut key and now press your new shortcut keys. I pressed Ctrl + Alt + V.

Google Docs is part of Google Drive- Google’s online storage system with a version of Microsoft Office built in.

In this video, I am using NVDA version 2016.3 and the Firefox browser on a Windows 10 laptop. Firefox is the recommended browser to use with NVDA and Google Docs.

Google Docs are very accessible which is fantastic news because it is free and can be accessed on lots of different devices.

The Accessibility menu is a menu that only appears on a Document when you enable screen reader support. Otherwise it stays hidden.

To enable screen reader support, have your screen reader running and then with a Google Doc on your screen, press the Ctrl, Alt and Z keys all together.

Your screen reader should say “screen reader support enabled.”

At the same time to the right of the Help menu at the top of your page, a new menu appears called Accessibility.

The Accessibility menu is there to help a screen reader user navigate and read a document.

When we open the accessibility menu there are 10 sub menus within it.

In today’s video I am going to look at the Headings, Graphics and links  sections in the menu.

I have recorded a couple of other videos about the speak and comments sections of the accessibility menu and you can find a link to those videos below.

NVDA has two modes; browse mode and focus mode. These modes enable us to access text in different ways.

You can toggle between browse mode and focus mode by pressing your NVDA key and the spacebar together. My NVDA key is the Insert key.

Make sure that NVDA is in browse mode. Press and release the NVDA key and the spacebar until you hear a beeping sound.

Let’s have a look at a very simple document which has some headings, graphics and links in it.

This article is about the US Open Tennis title.

To go to the next heading in this article, press Ctrl + Alt + N, then Ctrl + Alt + H which moves me forward through the article.

To go to the previous heading in this article, press Ctrl + Alt + P, then Ctrl + Alt + H which moves me backwards through the article.

To go to the next graphic in this article, press Ctrl + Alt + N, then Ctrl + Alt + G which moves me forward through the article.

To go to the previous graphic  in this article, press Ctrl + Alt + P, then Ctrl + Alt + G which moves me backwards through the article.

To go to the next link in this article, press Ctrl + Alt + N, then Ctrl + Alt + L which moves me forwards through the article.

To go to the previous link  in this article, press Ctrl + Alt + P, then Ctrl + Alt + L which moves me backwards through the article.

And as you might have spotted there is a definite structure in these shortcuts, which helps us remember them more easily.

All the shortcuts involve pressing Ctrl and Alt and then if we want to go to the next object in the document we press the N key.

If we want to go to the previous object, we press the P key.

Then if we are using headers we press H, Graphics we press G and links we press L.

And that’s it. Thanks for watching. 

End of Video Transcript