Apple TV: VoiceOver On and Off

Hello, my name is Douglas Walker. Today we are going to be taking a look at a really simple way that we have for quickly turning on and off VoiceOver. Now for those of you that might not know, VoiceOver is Apple's screen reading software, and a screen reader gives a person with a visual impairment the ability to totally use their device, and it does this by speaking the items or the information that is on our screen, and that is pretty fantastic.

All right, if we're new to our Apple TV, we're really going to need to know some basic VoiceOver gestures, and these are the gestures that we will use for navigating through our Apple TV. If we don't yet know these gestures well, it's our lucky day because we just so happen to have an Apple TV video called Beginning VoiceOver Gestures, so we are really going to want to check out that video as well.

Okay, like we said, today is all about checking out a really easy way for turning on and off VoiceOver, and the easiest way is by using our friend, Siri. Yeah, we love Siri, right? Anyway, we will use our Siri remote to activate Siri and turn on VoiceOver today. Now, if we're not yet familiar with our Siri remote, well, another plug here, we have an Apple TV video called Using the Siri Remote, and that video will get us totally familiar with all of our buttons and functions of our Siri remote, so hey, there's another video that you're really going to want to check out.

Now our Siri remote has our Siri button, which is super handy, so we'll just hold down our Siri button to activate Siri. Now, when we hold down our Siri button, we'll just say "Turn on VoiceOver."

Of course, VoiceOver will turn on, and we can begin using our VoiceOver gestures to totally navigate our Apple TV. I tell you, it really is as easy as that, so let's do it. We will just hold down our Siri button here on our Siri remote, turn on VoiceOver.

Siri: VoiceOver on. App store, row 1, column 2.

Douglas Walker: And there you go. We heard VoiceOver announce that it is now on, and hey, we are good to go. We can now begin moving right through our Apple TV, and that is pretty great.

So let's go ahead and flick a couple of times just to check it out here, so we'll flick to the right-

Siri: Movies, row 1, column 3.

Douglas Walker: And that's the Movies app. We'll flick to the right again-

Siri: TV shows, row 1, column 4.

Douglas Walker: So TV shows, and let's flick back over to our app store again.

Siri: Movies, row 1. App store, row 1, column 2.

Douglas Walker: Okay, it's probably also good to know how to turn VoiceOver off, right? Well, you've probably already guessed that we simply hold down our Siri remote button again, and we'll just say "Turn off VoiceOver," so let's go ahead and give it a try. We will hold down our Siri button here, turn off VoiceOver.

Siri: VoiceOver off.

Douglas Walker: Great. VoiceOver is now off, and we can now use our standard Siri remote gestures to move through our Apple TV, so let's just check that out and we'll just flick around, and no longer have VoiceOver running here, and there you go. I tell you, our Siri remote is super handy for getting us so much information as well as activating some really useful features like VoiceOver, right, and I tell you, that really is super fantastic for us.

Again, my name is Douglas Walker. Take care, and I'll see you next time.