Outlook Screen Reader: Calendar Basics

Ricky: Hello, my name is Ricky Enger and today we'll get a quick intro to the Outlook calendar. We'll explore different methods of viewing our calendar and we'll learn how to move to a specific date in the calendar. We're using NVDA as our screen reader but the concepts we learn here will be pretty similar no matter which screen reader we're using. Hey, wouldn't it be nice if we could easily remember everything we have to do in a day? And remember what time we should do it? Yeah, we'd all like that but it's just not realistic.

That's where the Outlook calendar comes in. It's a place where we can add all those appointments that we try to keep track of on our own and then we can just let the program take care of reminding us. Sounds good right. So let's get started. We're in Microsoft Outlook and we're focused in our inbox. To get to the calendar from here we just need to press one shortcut key, control plus the number two. It's too bad there's not really a nifty way to remember that but it'll stick with us once we use it a couple of times.

Screen Reader: Friday, January 17th 2020, 12:30pm to 1:30pm.

Ricky: Also when we're ready to get back to our inbox the shortcut key for that is control plus one. Okay, so now that we're here what do we do? How do we move around? Well some of that depends on how we're viewing our calendar information. Do we only care about our appointments for today? In that case, we'll use the day view, control plus alt plus one will put us in that view. Yeah, more fun keystrokes to remember but again the more we use these the better they'll stick. Let's just explore a little now that we're in this view. What happens if we press the up arrow key?

Screen Reader: 12:30 pm to 1:00pm. 12:00pm to 12:30pm. 11:20am to 12:00pm.

Ricky: Hey cool, we're moving backwards in time. Really we're just moving through a column of numbers in 30 minute increments. 12:00am is at the top of the column so as we move upwards in the column we're getting earlier and earlier in the day. If we want to move forward in time we'll press the down arrow to go the other direction.

Screen Reader: 12:00pm to 12:30pm. 12:30 pm to 1:00pm.

Ricky: So what do our left and right arrows do? Moving left moves us back a day.

Screen Reader: Thursday, January 16th 2020, 12:30pm to 1:00pm.

Ricky: And moving right moves us forward.

Screen Reader: Friday, January 17th 2020, 12:30pm to 1:00pm.

Ricky: Okay now let's shake things up a little. We know how day view works, let's take a look at the work week view. To get to this one we'll press control plus alt plus two.

Screen Reader: 12:30pm to 1:00pm.

Ricky: What happens now when we move left and right using our arrow keys? It's the same thing actually. We just move through.

Screen Reader: Thursday, January 16th 2020, 12:30pm to 1:00pm. Friday, January 17th 2020, 12:30pm to 1:00pm. Monday, January 20th 2020, 12:30pm to 1:00pm.

Ricky: Ah, in this view weekends don't exist. We're just looking at what would happen in a work week. Now we can get to a standard week view with control plus alt plus three.

Screen Reader: 12:30pm to 1:00pm.

Ricky: And in this one weekends do exist. Other than that our navigation is just the same as with the day view and work week view. So let's look at one last view, it's the month view and we'll move to it with control plus alt plus four.

Screen Reader: Monday, January 20th 2020, all day month view. 27 total events.

Ricky: Let's go through our process of using our arrow keys to navigate and see if anything's different in this view. So first the up arrow.

Screen Reader: Monday. January 13 2020, all day.

Ricky: Wow, instead of moving back in time by 30 minute increments we actually moved a week. Using the down arrow will move us forward a week.

Screen Reader: Monday, January 20th 2020, all day.

Ricky: And just as with our other views moving left and right takes us backward and forward day by day. We don't have to use all these views, we just want to choose one that works best of us and fits with how we plan to navigate around and view our information. Let's switch back to day view with control plus alt plus one for now.

Screen Reader: 8:00am to 8:30 am, day view, zero total events.

Ricky: So maybe it's kind of hard to find a little fun in scheduling appointments but moving backward and forward through time is definitely entertaining. We've explored how to do that but what if we want to move to a specific point in time? For this one we actually get a memorable keystroke, yay. Control plus G for go.

Screen Reader: Go to date dialogue. Date edit alt plus D. Selected mon one slash 20 slash 2020.,

Ricky: This pops up a dialogue box where we can enter the specific date that want want to go to. Right now the full date is displayed, including the day of the week. Sometimes we're just not going to know that information and thankfully we don't have to. Now even though we have our current date in here we can just start typing and what we enter is going to replace what's here now. So let's go to 12/31/2021. New Years Eve just before the year 2022. We'll type our 12 for the month.

Screen Reader: 12.

Ricky: Slash 31 for our day.

Screen Reader: 31.

Ricky: Another slash and then four digits for our year, 2021. Press enter.

Screen Reader: Calendar [email protected] Outlook, Friday, December 31st 2021.

Ricky: And it's the future. I'm Ricky Enger and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me today learning to navigate the calendar in Microsoft Outlook.