Hi Christina, OK, I misunderstood your question and assumed that, when you were speaking of birthday fields, you were speaking about iCal. I now understand that you're referring to Address Book instead.
OK, this is a complicated explanation. I'll try to make it as clear as I can. Sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride… Address Book definitely has a bug in that VoiceOver often doesn't echo typing and deletion of characters within a field. One has to type without feedback and move away and back to double check the input. When editing a birthday field, first, make sure you're actually editing the card rather than browsing the contact's scroll area and simply interacting with the card's information. Again, I must stress the difference. Command'l is the shortcut for editing a card. Now, assuming you've already added the birthday field, navigate to the field and interact with it. Make a mental note of the month. If I'm not mistaken, by default, the active field will be the month and the date will say December 31, 2000. In this case, use only your up or down arrow key to change the value. The up arrow will move the month forward like from december to January and the down arrow will move it back like from December to November, for example. Now, remember, you probably won't get any feedback. You'll probably hear the year but don't assume that the active keyboard focus is on the year field. When you've changed the month to what you think is correct, use only the right arrow key to go to the day field and then use only the up or down key to set the day. Repeat this for the year as well. Alternatively, you can try simply typing the value and not use the arrow keys. Sometimes that seems to work well but you might find yourself typing the wrong thing in the wrong field. To check your entry, don't stop interacting or that will throw you out of the scroll area. Instead, simply use Control-Option-left arrow to move left and then use Control-Option-right arrow to read the date field. Now, an important thing to remember is that, once you've interacted with the date field and have changed values and subsequently used VO-left arrow to move away and back to check the date, when you once again interact, you'll be on the last field you edited and not necessarily the month field like you were in when you first interacted at the outset. Does that make sense? In other words, you interacted the first time and the focus was on the month. You used the arrow keys to set the month, the right arrow key to move to day, the up and down arrows (or just typing) to set the day, right arrow to move to the year and set the year with what ever method you chose. Then you pressed VO-left arrow to move away and then VO-right arrow to move back. Let's say you needed to adjust the day field. When you again interact with the date field you'll be on the year because that's where you were the last time you interacted and that's where the keyboard focus is. So you now have to use the left arrow key to move back to the day field. Hopefully that explains the initial concept. Now, if you use other keys to navigate, like Tab, all bets are off on its behavior. I'd assume that if you actually tabbed to an edit field, VoiceOver's keyboard focus would leave the date field and upon tabbing back to it, the month would be the first focused field. Anyway, that's an assumption, I already stated. So, long story, it's not really easily accessible and it sounds complicated but, once you're used to the process, it's certainly doable. Hopefully that helps. Slau as On Mar 18, 2010, at 2:27 PM, Christina wrote: > I apologize for writing again about this issue. Is I am very frustrated > trying to enter dates into address book for birth dates and anniversaries. > > Is this not really accessible, or do I have a voiceover setting set up in a > way that is causing so much distress? > > I'll try to explain the issues. I can interact with the date field. I seem > to be able to vo left and right arrow between month/day/year. Then I have > tried typing in the info or using vo plus up and down arrows. Typing does > not seem to work as according to a sighted person there is a text cursor that > is not moving with the vo cursor. I do have vo set up so that it should be > following the vo cursor but it won't follow. I can move that cursor without > using the vo keys and using just the right and left arrows. However, there > is no audio feedback at all and I do not know where it is but if I type > where that cursor is then it will type in that spot. So, if I use vo plus up > and down arrows to change the month/day/year then it will move it up once and > announce December no matter what month is actually entered then the next time > I use vo plus up arrow vo completely jumps out of the date field. It is > incredibly frustrating. > > Is address book actually not accessible and should I use something else? Or > am i just not aware of the proper way to get this to work? I also forgot to > mention that I often have the need to alt plus tab to another program then > alt plus shift tab back to address book to get vo to interact properly for a > short bit with the date field. > > Thanks so much for any help or advice and I apologize for the lengthy e-mail. > > Christina > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. 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