Voiceover HTML navigation updates

There were quite a few updates to the VoiceOver screen reader on OSX Leopard, not least of which was the new, very smooth voice “Alex”. What will be of interest to developers is the new commands to help people navigate HTML.

These weren’t under the Safari bit of the VoiceOver manual, but are in the command list at the bottom. After lots of text-things that probably aren’t very useful (e.g. find the next italic text), you get:

Find the next item of the same type or the same text style

VO–Command–S

Find the next control

VO–Command–J

Find the next element that is different

VO–Command–N

Find the next table

VO–Command–T

Find the next heading of the same level

VO–Command–M

Find the next heading

VO–Command–H

Find the next blockquote

VO–Command–Q

Find the next visited link

VO–Command–V

For finding the previous instance instead of the next, just add shift to the combination, and there is still the type-ahead-find style link chooser.

I’ll have a more thorough play later, but interestingly there are two modes of navigation, the DOM mode:

You can move the VoiceOver cursor in a linear way, progressing across or down the website by moving from item to item on the page. This method provides excellent control but may slow you down if the page contains many items. This method uses the Document Object Model (DOM), which is the order specified by the developer of the website. Depending on the website, it can seem random.

And the ‘grouped’ mode:

You can navigate by grouped items. The VoiceOver cursor moves from one group of information to the next, and you interact with the group if you want to read its contents. This method speeds up navigation and allows you to quickly survey the contents of a page.

VoiceOver used to primarily use the second mode in version 1, and you used to get some strange odering based on the visual layout. The DOM mode (linear) should be much closer to Windows screen readers, and should work better for accessible sites.