This article was written with the following specification:
Item
|
Name
|
Version
|
Screen Reader
|
NVDA
|
2020.1
|
Program
|
Microsoft Team
|
1.3.00.19173
|
Ahh, Microsoft Team… This is another powerful tool that you will love
once you understand its capability. It is a fusion of skype, Drive, Facebook,
SharePoint and perhaps even more.
Like any software, learning how to operate with a provided
shortcut key is the very first step for a screen reader user. Though it helps
us to operate the software quickly, it may not help in some other small things
that is not covered by the keys. Generally speaking, the provided shortcut key is
only functioning in focus mode. Yet it lacks some important control over what
you could do, i.e. breaking down a long post to smaller pieces. While browse
mode in NVDA could achieve the same, it often reads out some information that
is not important i.e. the sender’s name.
If there is one thing to share that makes your Team easy to
use with NVDA, I would say the Document review feature.
Note: To understand what is review mode and navigation
curser, please check out the NVDA
20.1 user guide. In the future, I will also write a bit about the different
cursers described by NVDA.
The document review basically allow us to read text where your
system caret is not able to reach. For
instance, the command prompt in your windows, or the text in windows 10 setting.
With document review, your NVDA is able to read the text by lines or words or
characters even in the focus mode. So, there is no worry if your team is
sending you an article in the chat.
To access to the document review, press NVDA + Page up or down.
You will notice there are 3 review modes for your usage. This include Document
review, Screen review or Object review.
Since it is a review mode, the chat should be explored using
your review curser, i.e. Numpad 1 to 9. If you are using the laptop keyboard layout,
you could use:
·
NVDA + left or right (read by character)
·
NVDA + CTRL + Left or Right (Read by word)
·
NVDA + Up or Down (read the entire line)
If the chat or post has an attachment, you can hit enter and
press tab twice to reach to the item. This include documents, photos or voice
note.
While focus mode is useful, a long conversation will make
you frustrated. For instance, the up down arrow which read one message at a
time is highly not convenient if you are only interested in certain part of the conversation.
To resolve this issue, I would suggest to use Page up or Page
down key, or Control + home or end in focus mode. It will safe your time from reading and searching through the entire conversation.
That is some short tips for now. Please share this with your
friend if you find it useful.
Cheers.
