Handwriting with VoiceOver

Setting up and using handwriting

iOS and iPadOS offer handwriting as an alternative to dictation and typing on the keyboard. With handwriting, characters are drawn with a fingertip, one by one, on the screen. Handwriting may be useful for people who haven't learned to touch type and who lost their sight after having learnt to do handwriting. Braille Screen Input is also available on iPhone and iPad. 

Whenever text is being input you can switch to handwriting by turning the rotor to its handwriting position.

Turn the rotor until you hear VoiceOver announce "handwriting".  If "handwriting" doesn't seem to be available then it may need to be added to your rotor choices in Settings / Accessibility / VoiceOver / Rotor / Rotor Items. 

Please seek assistance if you're not yet confident enough with VoiceOver to do this yourself.

Handwriting may be the first item to appear when you turn the rotor clockwise, but if it isn't keep turning the rotor until you get there. When you reach "handwriting" on the rotor, you will probably hear VoiceOver speak "handwriting, lower case".

This means that your iPhone or iPad is waiting for you to write lower case letters, one at a time, with your finger on the screen. Don't try joined up writing. This won't work.

As you lift your finger after writing each letter, VoiceOver will speak the letter you have written.

For a space, swipe right with two fingers. After you enter a space, VoiceOver will speak the word you just completed.

To delete the last character, swipe left with two fingers. VoiceOver will speak the deleted character, usually in a lower pitch than when entering characters.

To enter a newline, swipe right with three fingers.

To change from lower case letters, swipe down with three fingers to cycle through the choices, upper case, numbers, punctuation and back to lower case.

You can swipe up with three fingers to cycle through the choices in the reverse order.

When you hear what you want, for example, "upper case", start writing upper case letters.

The order and direction in which you draw the strokes that constitute your letter or number may affect its recognition. My style of writing seems to work most of the time, but others have had difficulty. You may need to experiment with some letters.

For lower case i and j, draw the dot followed rapidly by the downward stroke. I find that drawing the characters more quickly improves recognition.  I certainly find that drawing large, but not too large, characters improves recognition significantly. But ultimately, it's whatever works for you.

In the UK, and possibly elsewhere, everyone I know finds it impossible to handwrite a question mark character, but there is a work around.  Draw the top part of the symbol, followed rapidly by the dot and VoiceOver will probably speak "comma". If you now swipe down with two fingers you should hear "question mark" and the comma will have been replaced by a question mark. More generally, this two finger swipe down lets you cycle through all the accented options for characters. For example, to handwrite café with an acute accent above the e, handwrite the letters c a f and e and then swipe down with two fingers until you hear  "ee acute". That's it. Job done.

When you have finished handwriting, you need to move the rotor setting away from handwriting to something like "words", which won't do any harm if you activate it accidentally with a swipe up or down with one finger. Alternatively, you can end a handwriting session with a two finger scrub gesture.  This is drawing a letter z with two fingers. When you are using handwriting, your iPhone or iPad will interpret every touch and swipe as a handwritten character. So if you need to activate a button like a Done button, you must first use the rotor or two finger scrub gesture to leave handwriting. It's easy to forget this if you don't use handwriting frequently!

Handwriting is particularly useful for entering your iPhone or iPad passcode. VoiceOver does not speak the characters of handwritten passcodes as they are entered and this can enhance your security if FaceID or TouchID doesn't work in a public place..

Known issues

Handwriting doesn't work correctly if Zoom is turned on. Zoom causes the essential three finger swipe gestures in handwriting to fail. If a user wants to alternate between using  handwriting and Zoom, then it may be helpful to add Zoom to the accessibility shortcut so that it may be turned on and off with a triple click of the home or side buttons.  Alternatively you could install my Siri shortcuts "zoom on" and "zomm off" to enable you to turn zoom on and off with those words to Siri.

If you have difficulty performing the standard rotor gesture and have set up two finger swipes right and left to turn the rotor, you will only be able to exit handwriting with either the standard rotor gesture or a two finger scrub. Depending on how you are set up, the two finger scrub can sometimes exit handwriting but leaves the rotor positioned so that your next two finger swipe returns you to handwriting, forcing you to go round the rotor in the opposite direction. 

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