Intro to advanced navigation with VoiceOver on Mac
You have several ways to browse and navigate webpages, apps, text, and controls:
VoiceOver rotor: Use the VoiceOver rotor when viewing webpages to quickly jump to web items such as links, headings, window spots, tables, and more. See Use the VoiceOver rotor.
Item Chooser: With Item Chooser, quickly navigate to text, controls, links, or graphics on the screen. See Use the VoiceOver Item Chooser to navigate.
Quick Nav: With Quick Nav, navigate webpages using only arrow keys or single keys. See Use VoiceOver Quick Nav in apps and webpages.
Tab key: Set an option to use keyboard navigation to move the keyboard focus between controls such as text boxes, lists, radio buttons, or checkboxes. See Use VoiceOver and the Tab key to navigate.
Hot spots: You can assign a hot spot to an item, then use the hot spot to jump to that item, instead of navigating to it. Use VoiceOver hot spots.
Drag and drop: Drag and drop items from one location to another. Use VoiceOver to drag and drop items.
DOM or group mode: Choose a default navigation mode, by Document Object Model (DOM) or by grouping related items. You can switch between modes to use the one best suited for the current webpage. See Use VoiceOver to navigate webpages by DOM or group mode.
Trackpad gestures: Use the web settings of the gestures rotor to navigate using gestures. See Use the trackpad gestures rotor with VoiceOver.
Note: VO represents the VoiceOver modifier that you press with additional keys to enter VoiceOver commands. By default, you can press Control and Option together or just press Caps Lock.
Some websites use keyboard commands for specific purposes, such as using an arrow key to jump to another item, which causes the commands to be unavailable for navigating text on the website. To set an option to always use keyboard commands to navigate text, open VoiceOver Utility (press VO-Fn-F8 when VoiceOver is on), click Web, then click Navigation.
Web developers can assign keyboard shortcuts, called access keys, to webpage items such as links and buttons, to make them easier to interact with. VoiceOver can announce when it detects access keys, saying, for example, “Access key available: S” for a link; you would then press Control-S to open the link. To set an option to hear access keys, open VoiceOver Utility (press VO-Fn-F8 when VoiceOver is on), click Verbosity, then click Hints.
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