Replying to mail and forwarding mail using VoiceOver on iPhone and iPad

If you have opened and read an email message you may want to reply to it or forward it to someone else. Here's how. 

After reading the email if you want to reply,  swipe upwards with one finger until you hear "reply" and then double tap to commence the reply process. It's rather unfortunate that this action is labelled reply since it opens a menu that offers many more actions than reply; think of it as a "more actions" button. After double tapping you will be presented with several actions near the bottom of the screen; VoiceOver will usually be focused on this area of the screen and will speak the name of the sender. Swipe right until you hear "reply" and double tap to commence your reply. VoiceOver will be focused on the message body but isn't always correctly positioned at the start and is sometimes positioned at the end after "Sent from my iPhone". To ensure your reply doesn't follow "Sent from my iPhone" double tap until you hear "insertion point at start".

Now you should enter your reply and then locate and double tap the Send button near top right.

If you wanted to reply to the sender and all other recipients of the message you could have continued swiping past "reply" and choose "reply all" in the menu that popped up after your first double tap on reply.

Forwarding an email is the process of sending an email to a new recipient or recipients. If you want to forward an email to a new recipient or recipients, the process is similar to replying.  Open the email and begin reading it. Swipe up to find reply and double tap. The menu of actions will appear in the lower part of the screen. Swipe right to locate "forward" and double tap. You will then be editing the Too field in a new email which will include the forwarded message.  Add one or more recipients as usual. If you don't need to add an explanatory message of your own, locate the send button and double tap. If you do need to add some explanatory text, swipe right to the message body. Double tap to start editing the message body. If you don't hear "insertion point at start", double tap with one finger until you do hear "insertion point at start". This will ensure that your text appears before the forwarded message and doesn't come after the forwarded message where it may easily be overlooked. Finally, enter your text and then locate and double tap the send button at top right.

The menu of actions can also be summoned when a message is being read using the "more actions" button in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This is to the left of the compose button so it's easy to find by locating the compose button at bottom right and then swiping left once.

It's also possible to reply to or forward an email message directly from the Inbox or other mailbox list. Locate the message and then swipe up until you hear "more" and then double tap. The standard menu of items appears at the bottom of the screen.

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