Outlook Screen Reader: Using Appointments

Ricky: Hello, my name is Ricky Enger and today we'll learn how to view out appointments in the Outlook 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, it's a brand new day full of possibilities. We can lounge in bed and read all day, or we can go for a long walk or fix that annoying leaky faucet. Or, wait, there's something we're forgetting, what could it be?

Well, we can sit here trying to remember, but that sounds like a really annoying way to spend this glorious day. And, thankfully, because of our Outlook calendar, we don't have to. We can just check to see if we have any appointments, so how do we do that? We're here in our Outlook calendar, and we're in our day view. We can make sure of that by pressing Control + Alt + One.

Screen Reader: Eight a.m. to 8.30 a.m., day view, two total events.

Ricky: Now, to check out any appointments we might have today, we'll use Control + Period. We can remember that by thinking, what appointments do I have during this period of time? So when we press that.

Screen Reader: Appointment, dentist appointment, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Ricky: Oh, the dentist, really? Well, this day seems slightly less glorious now, but it's good that we know this and we won't miss an appointment. Do we have anything else besides this dentist appointment scheduled for today? Let's find out. All we have to do is press Control + Period again.

Screen Reader: Appointment, relax in park after dentist, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Ricky: Now, that's a nice appointment. It's great to do something relaxing after spending time at the dentist's office. Okay, so let's press Control + Period one more time.

Screen Reader: Has appointment, Friday, February 14th, 2020, all day.

Ricky: Well, that's a little different, our date has actually changed, so we've moved to the next date on our calendar with an appointment. We skip over several days where we have nothing scheduled and jump to a date where we do have things on our calendar. So Outlook reads us the date and then says we have an appointment, and then says all day. Does this mean we have an appointment all day?

That's a natural assumption to make based on what we just heard, but that's not what Outlook is telling us. We've moved to the next day that has an appointment and we're currently viewing the entire day. We haven't yet found an appointment on that day, we can explore this day with our arrow keys, of course, but where's our actual appointment? Let's press Control + Period again and see what happens.

Screen Reader: Appointment, eat lots of chocolate for Valentine's Day, eight a.m. to nine a.m.

Ricky: Okay, well that's a very important appointment indeed. Mm, chocolate. Oh, right, best not to get too distracted because there's that dentist appointment today. What time was that again? Let's move back to our previous day with appointments and find out. To do that, we'll press Control + Comma. We'll press that, and we hear.

Screen Reader: Has appointment, Monday, February 10th, 2020, all day.

Ricky: Great, we've moved back to our previous day with appointments and, again, we hear all day. So that means we're viewing our whole day, but we still need to find our appointment. To do that, we'll press Control + Period to move through all the appointments we have on this day.

Screen Reader: Appointment, dentist appointment, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Ricky: Yep, there it is. Now, there's one last thing we need to do, let's go ahead and open this appointment to review any notes we've made. To open it, we'll just press Enter.

Screen Reader: Dentist appointment, appointment, dialogue, location added, blank.

Ricky: Now we'll just press tab.

Screen Reader: Message added, multi line, ask about which electric toothbrush to use.

Ricky: Hey, cool, when we tab, we automatically hear our notes. And now we can ask about that electric toothbrush. Of course, there's one other weird thing we heard when we opened the appointment. Dentist appointment, appointment. What's that about? Well, each time we create an appointment, Outlook actually labels it as an appointment. So if we don't wanna hear that duplicate word, we'll just be careful when we title our appointments. If we simply typed dentist in our subject line when we created the appointment, we would now hear dentist appointment as our title. We can close this appointment with our Escape key.

Screen Reader: Calendar, [email protected], Outlook.

Ricky: And now we're right back in our calendar. I'm Ricky Enger, and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me today learning to view appointments in the Outlook Calendar.