Voice Control - notes of a Zoom session by Balwant Riyait

Notes from a Zoom presentation in May 2021

Introduction

About 3 months ago- started looking at smart speakers and last month looked at louie on smart phones

2 months ago started learning about voice control. Podcasts. A lot of VIP using it

Its another tool on iphone you can use. You don’t need internet connection or wifi to use it. Not perfect. Lot of bugs. Encountered difficulties.

Beginners in learning need to learn voice over gestures. Essential to learn gestures and how to operate, then can give voice control a try.

Materials I’ve gathered are not all mine, have taken from different sources and experimented what works and what doesn’t.

There’s no pressure to try anything out its entirely up to you but if you want to give it a go it might prove useful to you or someone you know.

Voice control mainly used by people with disabilities of hand and fingers but VIPs have taken to it also.

If you have some sight and don’t rely totally on voice over its easier to use as parts are visual. Also voice control is alway listening and using voice over speech does interfere with it.

If you are a voice over user it works better using headphones or ear buds as that reduces interference.

Im using iPhone SE2020 running 14.4.2 and I’ve also tried on Sarah’s iphone 7 and voice control was available from ios13 onwards. Only some of the commands have changed now.

Today we are only learning about basic commands. We’ll come to advanced some time in future. Work is still in progress and as I’ll be updating my phone to 14.5 I’ll give an update as to what has changed then.

Settings

It is best to open settings manually rather than asking Siri to do for the first time. This way you will know where voice control is situated.

Open settings and then go to accessibility, and select it, then locate voice control which will be off and one finger double tap at this point.

A new page will open up with further settings.

Before you switch voice control on it is recommended to check out further settings if they are to your requirement and make changes as required.

Go down to language and check if it is set to English UK (default setting). Other English languages are also available here.

Download USA English from the cloud and select it. It works best with USA English rather than other languages!

Next is play sound - switch this on. Successful command will be confirmed by by a swish sound. This can be switched off if not required here.

Next leave other default settings on.

Now go back to the top of this page and switch voice control button on.

Basic voice control commands.

Wake up, will activate voice control and selects first app top left on home screen.

Go to sleep, will put voice control into sleep mode, until you say wake up again. If you don’t give any commands for a couple of minutes voice control will go into standby and will need waking up again.

Open control centre, go home. Open will open control centre and go home will take you back to top left app on home page. Similar to pressing home button on phone.

Go home will always take you back to top left app on home screen.

If you’ve opened one app you can just say open and the name of whatever other app you require without giving go home command.

Open notification centre, go home. open app switcher. If you want to open any other app you just say open followed by the name of the app you want to open.

Open Siri and be prepared to quickly ask it a question or action you wish Siri to carry out. Use go back or go home command to come out of Siri.

Scroll up, down, left, right.(If you just say first part of the command it does give you some hints). This will scroll page at a time.

Repeat five times, before you give this command, voice-over need to know which Direction you want The action carried out. For example if you have been scrolling downwards three pages down and now you want to go up what you say is repeat, then followed by number of times.

Navigating around the page.

Voice-over select first item. This will take you to the top left of the page.

Select last item. This will take you to the bottom of the page in dock area.

Voice-over select previous item. This will move one step backwards.

Voice-over select next item. This would move one step forward.

Repeat followed by number of times , Can also be used by first giving direction of navigation. For example if you are at the top of the page, say voice-over select next item followed by repeat five times.

Voice-over activate. This is similar to doing one finger doubletap.

Press or tap followed by the name of the app will also Open the app up.

Example of the demo.

First say go home, tap settings, voice-over select next item, repeat four times, activate, go back, and go home.

Open app switcher voice-over will select previous item opened. Repeat again to keep viewing until you reach a required app. Finish it off by saying voice-over activate which will open that app. when finished say go home.

You can also close the selected app by saying swipe up.

Voice-over select status bar then voice-over select next item, voice-over select last item, voice-over select previous item. Finish by saying go home.

Voice-over read all (equivalent to Two finger swipe down) Will start reading from top off the page.

Voice-over magic tap (equivalent to double tap) similar to doing two finger double tap or command stop speaking (equivalent to two finger touch) this will stop voice-over talking.

Making a phone call- if using with voice over you need to use head phones.

Open Phone. voice-over select last item, voice-over select previous item (Keypad), Activate, or (if you are in bottom dock area you can say tap followed by keypad), now say tap followed by the first digit and repeat for all digits. Finish by saying tap call.

Cannot end the call by giving it command it relies on the other person ending the call as voice control and voice over don’t listen whilst you are on a call to prevent commands being accidentally carried out when any key words are said during call.

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