Rotor essentials, with handwriting and Braille Screen Input

Title slide: Rotor - handwriting - BSI

Rotor essentials and on-screen handwriting and Braille.

A Vista Tech Talk and Tea session

Brian Negus 24 September 2020

Questions and comments

Yes please!

At the end, if anyone wants to stay on, I’ll help you try some of what’s introduced in this session if you wish.

The rotor

The rotor is a VoiceOver gesture that you use to choose what happens when you swipe up or down with one finger.

Think of turning the rotor as moving a pointer on a circular dial. Each pointer position selects one rotor function; it’s a circle so you can go either way round and there are no end stops.

The selected rotor position defines what happens when you swipe vertically with one finger. For example, if you rotate the rotor to volume, the media volume can be increased by swiping up and decreased by swiping down.

There are two exceptions to this vertical swipe behaviour (and that’s what we’re doing in this session) - handwriting and Braille Screen Input.

The rotor gesture

Turn two fingers clockwise or anti-clockwise on the screen..

Could be a finger and thumb or even one finger from your left hand and another from your right hand.

If you find that hard try resting two fingers on the screen and rotating the phone instead; probably not hugely practical on an iPad!

When the rotor turns an image appears briefly on screen displaying the setting that you have chosen and VoiceOver also speaks that setting.

What’s on the rotor dial

The rotor will already have several items around its dial, but you can decide which items you want to appear.

Too many items and it may take a long time to find the one you want, so remove any you don’t use after a while and you may need to add some, for example handwriting or Braille Screen Input.

To check what’s on your rotor or to add or delete items, ask Siri to open VoiceOver settings, swipe right to rotor and then double tap.

You can now swipe right through the list of all available rotor items. If the item name is preceded by “selected” then that item is currently available on your rotor.

You will also hear “reorder” options which allow you to move items around the dial. Let’s leave these alone for now.

If you want to remove an item that is currently selected, double tap. If you want to add an item that is not selected, double tap.

If you want to try either handwriting or Braille Screen Input, then the rotor item must be selected. The rotor is the only way to start handwriting or Braille Screen Input.

A note about the rotor dial

When you turn the rotor, the dial will only offer items that are meaningful in the current context. For example, you will find fewer items around the rotor dial when you are on the home screen, but most rotor items will be available when you are composing an email.

I can’t perform the rotor gesture

Practice the rotor gesture by double tapping on the Home screen with 4 fingers to enter gesture practice (VoiceOver calls this help). Practice the gesture and finish with a 2 finger scrub (draw a z), by doing another 4 finger double tap or by clicking the Home button.

If you can’t do the rotor gesture - Don’t Panic!

All VoiceOver gestures can be reassigned.

We can change the rotor gestures to two finger swipes right and left.

This is a bit fiddly, but it’s a one-off effort.

It is done in the commands section of VoiceOver settings but inexperienced users should probably seek assistance either in person or over the phone.

So just to be clear - you can choose to use either the standard rotor gestures or the easier two finger swipe right or left gestures.

How to change the rotor gesture

Details to follow if you want to turn the rotor with 2 finger swipes right and left.

Instruct Siri to open VoiceOver settings.

Swipe right to “commands” and double tap.

Swipe right to “touch gestures” and double tap.

Swipe right repeatedly or otherwise locate “two finger swipe left” and double tap.

Swipe right to the search field and double tap to edit it.

Either dictate or type “rotor”.

Slide a finger from top of screen to locate “previous rotor” (NOT previous rotor item) and double tap.

Use a similar process to assign a two finger swipe right to “next rotor”.

If you have the rotor set to swipes...

This works in iOS 13 and 14 BUT you will need iOS 14 if you want to try handwriting or Braille Screen Input if you can't perform the standard rotor gesture.

In iOS 13, the only way to end handwriting or Braille Screen Input is with the standard rotor gesture.

Apple fixed this bug in iOS and iPadOS 14.

Handwriting

Zoom must not be enabled.

Handwriting must first be added to the rotor in VoiceOver settings.

Whenever you are entering text, turn the rotor to handwriting and you can begin.

Draw largish letters, numbers and symbols on screen as quickly as you like, but not joined up.

Multi-stroke characters, like lower case i and t need to be completed with only a brief delay between the strokes, so tap for the dot and then draw the down stroke for an i as quickly as possible.

Handwriting needs to be told if you are entering lower case, capitals, numbers or punctuation. Set by swiping up or down with 3 fingers.

Handwriting commands

3 finger swipe up or down to select between lower case, caps, punctuation and numbers 2 finger swipe right for a space.

2 finger swipe left to delete the previous character.

3 finger swipe right for a new line.

3 finger swipe left for a quick way to enter a full stop.

To find an accented character, draw the character then swipe up or down with two fingers until you hear what you want. Impress your friends by writing café with an e acute!

Use a standard rotor gesture or a two finger scrub to exit handwriting. Perform a two finger scrub by drawing a letter z with two fingers.

Uses for handwriting

Enter your passcode silently with handwriting. (VoiceOver ends handwriting automatically after this).

On the home screen, handwrite the first few letter of an app’s name and then double tap.

Use handwriting to enter things that can’t be dictated, like email addresses and passwords (you’ll need to practice the @ symbol).

Some characters just don’t work. £ and question mark are two I can’t handwrite.

If you want, you could write an email or a long document entirely with handwriting or you could dictate and then use the rotor and handwriting to correct mistakes. (I’ll talk about editing mistakes in another session if people wish).

Exit handwriting

When you are handwriting, all touches on the screen are interpreted as handwriting, so you can’t find a button and double tap it. To do that you must exit handwriting.

Exit handwriting either with the standard rotor gesture or with a two finger scrub.

A two finger scrub is performed by drawing a letter z with two fingers.

The two finger scrub is a general purpose back button in all situations, but I don’t recommend it for inexperienced users, since, unlike back buttons, it doesn’t give you an indication of where you are going back to.

Braille Screen Input (BSI)

Zoom must not be enabled.

BSI must first be added to the rotor in VoiceOver settings.

Whenever you are entering text, turn the rotor to BSI and you can begin.

Table top and screen away modes.

In table top mode, place the phone on a table and type on the screen as you would on a Perkins Brailler.

In screen away mode, hold the phone between your palms in landscape mode with the screen facing away from you. Curl you index, middle and ring fingers on to the screen and tap to form the Braille characters.

On iPad 8 dot Braille is available but only 6 dot on smaller iPhone screen.

Spoken feedback

By default (I think) VoiceOver will speak every letter as you enter it and every word after a space or punctuation.

You may want this while you practice, but you will probably want to change this later.

Ask Siri to “open VoiceOver settings” and swipe right to typing and double tap.

Swipe right to typing feedback and double tap.

Swipe right to the Braille Screen Input heading and then continue swiping to select your preference. After a little practice, I set mine to words. This highlights typos which are easy to fix as you go along.

Registering your finger positions

You should tell the iPhone or iPad where you will place your fingers for the Braille doors.

On iPhone, first tap the screen with the three fingers of your right hand and then immediately follow with your left hand

On iPad, double tap all six dots simultaneously (The web Apple user guide currently get this wrong. They’ll either fix the guide or how you calibrate.)

You must hear “dot positions calibrated” to confirm that this has worked. If you don’t do this successfully the dots may be in all sorts of weird positions.

When typing, you must hold your fingers away from the screen and touch only when you want to type Braille dots.

I find it much easier to work in screen away mode and, of course, this can be used when there is no surface available to rest the iPhone on.

Some BSI gestures

Swipe right with one finger for a space.

Swipe left with one finger to delete.

Swipe right with 2 fingers for a new line.

Cycle through spelling suggestions by swiping up or down with one finger; swipe right with one finger to choose.

Enter a carriage return or send a message (in Messages) by swiping up with 3 fingers.

Swipe left or right with 3 fingers to switch between Braille modes.

Concluding slides: Questions and comments?

Concluding slides: Any suggestions for future sessions?

Final slide: Would anyone like to stay online and try the rotor, handwriting or Braille?

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