Use VoiceOver to Speak Items on the iPad

Learn how to have the iPad speak your button selection using VoiceOver.

Did you know you could have the iPad speak anything you tap or select on the iPad? Once you select it by tapping on in, you can then ‘activate’ by tapping on it twice. This is all done through the VoiceOver Accessibility option. In this video, I go through some of the basics of VoiceOver along with some of the options VoiceOver offers on the iPad.

Video TranscriptIn this video, we’re going to look at how we’ll use VoiceOver on the iPad. With VoiceOver what we’re able to do is have the iPad speak items on the screen. So it can speak buttons as you tap them. Let’s take a look at VoiceOver on the iPad. Let’s go to my iPad.

Now, as I mentioned in the introduction, with VoiceOver what we’re able to do is have our iPad speak when we tap on a specific button. If you’re having a hard time seeing what a button is, you can use VoiceOver to have the iPad announce what a button is.

So how do we use VoiceOver? How do we turn it on? Well, it’s an Accessibility option. So what we need to do is go over to our Settings app. Now what we do is we go over to Accessibility. Our first option under Accessibility is VoiceOver. I tap on this and we have our VoiceOver.

Now, if you want to learn more about it, you just tap on Learn More. We get a little card that pops up and I can read what it will do. So basically when I turn this on, what’s going to happen is when I tap on a button, it’s going to select it. And it’s going to announce what that button is. As an example, we have a button up here – Done. When I tap on it, it’s going to announce what that button is, but that’s all it’s going to do. If you want to activate it, what you’ll need to do is double tap on it. And then if you want to swipe, you know move the screen up and down, you have to use three fingers.

So let’s tap on Done here and see how this works. So now I go over to VoiceOver and turn it on. When I turn this on, the iPad will immediately start speaking. It’s going to tell me that the Settings here is selected. So I tap on VoiceOver here to turn it on VoiceOver on. Landscape Home button. So it’s basically telling me that I am in landscape mode and my Home button is to the right.

If you want to practice, you can tap on VoiceOver practice. Now, when I tap on this, it’s not going to select it. It’s not going to open it up. All it is going to do is tell me what this button is. Remember the first time you tap on anything or select it, all it does is just announce what it is. You have to double tap it to activate it, or actually select it.

So I’m going to tap on this VoiceOver Practice button. So it told me that it was a button for VoiceOver practice. So now I want to activate it. Now, what I do is I double tap on it, one to VoiceOver practice heading, and we can see it went into the VoiceOver practice mode. So now I’m going to tap on this.

Practice VoiceOver gestures, and typing in this area, select the Done button in the top, right corner and double tap to exit.

So if I want to select the button in the upper right-hand corner, I tap on it. If I want to activate it, I double tap on it. So now let’s tap on it.

Done. Button.

It told me it was a button and it is Done. I want to select or activate it. I have to get the select and activate right, basically I select it by tapping on it. I activate it by double tapping on it. So I double tap on it. One two. Voiceover Practice settings heading. And it activated it. So if I want to go to my App Store Settings. What do I do? I tap on it once to get that VoiceOver telling me that I selected App Store button. It told me that it was the App Store button. But I want to activate it. Well, then what I do is I double tap on it. One, two. Settings heading. And now it is selected. I have to do the same thing with any one of these buttons.

Let’s go back over to my Accessibility. So I tap on it once to select it Accessibility button, and then I double tap on it Accessibility to activate it. To go back over to my VoiceOver settings. I tap on it once VoiceOver on button, and then I double tap back button.

Now, remember how I told you that you needed to swipe with three fingers to scroll? Watch what happens when I swipe with three fingers. You’re going to see my selection is going to scroll up and down. I swipe. My selection is moving up and down. So that’s how you scroll with voiceover on.

We can make a number of different changes. I can change the speaking rate. I also have a number of different speech settings. I have verbosity and audio settings. Basically what I would recommend doing if you’re going to use VoiceOver is just tap on each one of these to see what they do.

Now, you can also look at all these different settings without having VoiceOver on. Let’s turn VoiceOver off. How do I do that? Well I have it selected here, so now all I have to do is just double tap on it, and voiceover is off. So now what I’m able to do is take a look at each one of these without having that VoiceOver on. So if I wanted to get a good look at what they can do without having VoiceOver on, so let’s go to Speech. What I’m able to do here is set what the voices I can change the pitch. I can detect languages. Let’s go back over to VoiceOver. Let’s go over to Verbosity. From here, what I’m able to do is customize how punctuation is output. Right now to speaking hints, I can turn that off. I can have it speak my notifications. So we have a number of different options for our VoiceOver.

So that’s a look at VoiceOver. With VoiceOver what we’re able to do is have our iPad speak items that are on our screen and can provide helpful hints. This is an Accessibility option. So the first thing you’ll need to do is go to the Settings app and then go to Accessibility. You’ll see VoiceOver. Tap on that and then you’ll see all of the different options you have available. What you can do is go through all of the different options without turn it and on, just to see what different options you have. And then once you have it set, you can turn it on. When you turn it on, your iPad will immediately start speaking what is selected. So whenever you tap on a button, it’s going to speak what that button is. It won’t activate it. So how do you activate it? You double tap. And then if you want to scroll, you use three fingers to scroll.

So that’s a basic look at VoiceOver on the iPad.