Hi,
I'm helping someone who is very new to iPhone. They recently went blind, by recently, I mean in the past 5 years. They have an iPhone 13, and also an iPhone 8, so one with a home button, and one without. Right now, they are using both voiceover and voice control, I use voiceover every day, but have never even dabbled in voice control. Anyway, he uses voice control to do tasks like scroll facebook and check emails. I seem to notice he has trouble swiping and double tapping, and for the life of me, as a teacher, I don't know the best way to guide him. I really feel like he has the potential to go quite far with iOS, and as a teacher, I don't want to let him down. So could some of you who teach iphone, or have taught it in the past, possibly give me some tips for teaching him? This day and age, in a post-pandemic world, I'm not sure how comfortable he'd be with holding my hand and having me show him how to swipe. When he swipes, it's almost like he's dragging his finger across the screen, and I don't know if it's because voice control is on, but it almost seems as though his double taps don't register.
Any pointers would be quite welcome, I'm stumped, this has been on my mind for the past week.
By Moopie Curran, 14 December, 2023
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
My thoughts
Hi,
You can always ask if he'd be comfortable doing hand over hand with you.
If he isn't, then my recommendation would be to get him to practice the gesture, but at a very slow pace.
It may help, also, if he has the opportunity to watch you do it. Then he can, slowly, replicate what you're doing and speed up as he gets more comfortable. While I realize the system will probably confuse the 'swiping' for navigating by touch, the movement itself is the more important thing. The speed can be worked on after.
As for his double taps not registering, my guess is he isn't moving fast enough. You can actually change how long voiceover waits to confirm the double tap gesture. Go to settings>accessibility>voiceover, and scroll all the way to the bottom until you find the "double tap timeout" option. I hope this helps.
Voiceover practice
There is also the voiceover practice section, where all the gestures can be practised independently. I have taught others hand over hand. Just keep encouraging even small successes.