Google Docs Screen Reader: Shortcuts Tips and Tricks

Ricky: Hello, my name is Ricky Enger and today, we're going to take a look at a few tips and tricks for making our Google Docs experience even better and more efficient. We'll be using the Chrome Web browser and the NVDA Screen Reader but things are gonna be pretty similar, no matter which browser and Screen Reader we're using. You know, Google Docs really is a powerful tool, and we've learned a lot about the cool things it can do over the past few workshops in this series. There's lots more we haven't discovered though. So let's look at just a few of the features we haven't explored yet. Let's start by making our Google Docs homepage a little easier to navigate. So, we'll open our page at docs.google.com.

Screen Reader: Docs.google.com selected. Recent documents list.

Ricky: Okay, we're in our list of recent documents and if we wanna move through that list, we can use our right arrow key to do that. We're in a grid view, which means that we can have multiple rows of documents instead of one straight list. Now, as our documents list grows, it would be easier to just have all of our documents laid out in one column or list so we could use our down arrow key until we reach the bottom of the list. That way, we never have to concern ourselves with figuring out when we've reached the end of one row and need to move down to the next row to find more files.

So, let's enable our list view here. We'll exit applications mode with NVDA + Spacebar. There we go, we heard our little sound. Now, we need to find our button for switching from grid view to list view. We can either press Shift plus B, B for button, to move backward through all the buttons until we find the one we want, or we can use our up arrow key until we find it. There's really no wrong way to do this. I'm going to use shift plus B this time. So we'll press that.

Screen Reader: Open file picker button.

Ricky: Okay and again.

Screen Reader: Sort options menu button, collapse sub menu.

Ricky: Okay, cool. We can press space bar there if we want to sort by various options like last opened or by title and so on. Let's keep going with shift plus B.

Screen Reader: List view button.

Ricky: Ah, there it is. Our button to switch to list view. So we'll press our space bar.

Screen Reader: Grid today last opened by me list.

Ricky: Okay, nice. We're back in our recent files list and we can press our down arrow key to move through the list now. No more grid to worry about. This view will stay active for the next time we open our Google Docs homepage as well, so we don't have to switch to it each time. Now that we've made our homepage easier to navigate, let's practice some other tips and tricks inside a new document. So we'll go to our address bar with Alt plus D.

Screen Reader: Tool bar. Address and search bar edit has auto complete control plus now selected HTT.

Ricky: And we'll type docs.new

Screen Reader: Docs new docs.new selected. Google Docs document. Untitled document Google Docs. Application. Braille support enabled on page one.

Ricky: All right. Now we need a little text to work with, so we'll just type Google Docs is fantabulous.

Screen Reader: Fantabulous.

Ricky: Wait, fantabulous? Is that even a word? Well, let's find out. We'll use our control plus left arrow to move back a word and focus on what we wanna look up.

Screen Reader: Fantabulous.

Ricky: And then we'll press control plus shift plus Y.

Screen Reader: Dictionary results for fantabulous sidebar.

Ricky: Okay great. We're focused on a sidebar, which is basically just an area outside our document that will display some additional info. Now, we're still in applications mode because we didn't hear a little sound. We need to get out of that mode though, in order to review our results. So NVDA plus space bar.

Screen Reader: Dictionary results for fantabulous site.

Ricky: Okay and now we'll just use our down arrow key to explore what's here just as we do with any other webpage. So press down arrow a few times.

Screen Reader: Out of list clickable heading level one dictionary. Button closed dictionary. Clickable search dictionary edit fantabulous, clickable fantabulous slash Vanderbilt slash adjective, adjective fantabulous, list with one items, one. Excellent, wonderful dot a fantabulous prize.

Ricky: This is great! Anytime. We're not sure about a word. We can just use that one keystroke control plus shift plus y to look it up in the dictionary. All right. We'll use shift plus B to get back to that close button.

Screen Reader: Clickable close dictionary button.

Ricky: And we'll press our space bar to close the dictionary sidebar for now.

Screen Reader: Document, document region, document content, edit multiline Google docs is fantabulous.

Ricky: And here we are back in our document. I'm just going to type a bit more text and then we'll use our spelling and grammar checker to make sure everything is okay. So I'll type "Ill keep using it." And now let's do our spelling and grammar check with control plus alt plus X.

Screen Reader: Change "Ill" to suggestions "I'll" button.

Ricky: Aha, it looks like you missed an apostrophe in that last sentence, which should say I'll keep using it. So yeah, let's change ill to I'll. We can just press our space bar right here. Otherwise we can tab through the dialogue for options to ignore this particular word, find other suggestions if there are any and so on. So we'll press space.

Screen Reader: Document looks good.

Ricky: Nice. We've spelled checked our document.

Screen Reader: Document, document content edit multiline Google docs is fantabulous.

Ricky: Now you may have noticed a few keyboard shortcuts throughout this workshop and throughout the rest of the series. There's a lot to remember, and there are a number of other really useful shortcuts that we haven't even covered. Some may be familiar from other word processing programs control plus B to bold text, control plus I for a italics, control plus K to insert a link.

Yeah, there are lots of these. There are also shortcuts specific to Google docs like our spelling and grammar shortcut or control plus alt plus I to bring up a sidebar, which lets us explore information from the web about our selected text. If this is starting to sound like way too much to take in and remember, then we're on the right track because we actually don't need to have all this memorized. Over time, we're going to remember the shortcuts we need most often and for others, there's a nice little cheat sheet we can use. We've got a link in the resources section that lists all the available shortcuts so that's a great way to keep track of them and believe it or not, there's actually a shortcut we can use to bring up the list of shortcuts. We can press control plus slash to see what's available.

Screen Reader: Keyboard shortcuts. Heading level two keyboard shortcuts, search.

Ricky: Have fun exploring that list and learning more about what Google docs can do. I'm Ricky Enger and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me learning tips and tricks for Google docs. If you have questions or if you have your own tips to share, contact a learning expert, we'd love to hear from you. See you next time.