VoiceOver is a device screen reader that voices what occurs on a device's screen by providing audible descriptions of what is on a the screen- from battery level, to the name of the person calling, to which app your finger is on.
Through a bluetooth connection between the device and the Kobiton Mac Mini, VoiceOver will be able to assist with testing your app for accessibility functionality.
If your system is not setup for VoiceOver gestures on iOS devices, send us an email or open a ticket and we'll get back to you about setting up VoiceOver on your devices.
VoiceOver Prerequisites
- iOS 12.0 and later
- device must be physically connected to the host machine (Mac Mini)
- Kobiton GEM or Orion Audio Board Card
Bluetooth pairing for on-premise iOS devices
- On the Mac Mini, open System Preferences, enable Bluetooth toggle button. Leave the Bluetooth window open, you'll need it for pairing discoverability.
- On the Kobiton portal, launch a session with an iOS device.
- On the iOS device, navigate to Settings > Bluetooth; enable bluetooth.
- On the Bluetooth screen, under MY DEVICES, select the Mac the device will connect.
- On the Mac, click Pair on the prompt confirming whether to pair the device to pair the virtual keyboard
Device not pairing try the following to establish a connection.
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Instead of initiating the pairing from the device, initiate the pairing from the Mac.
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Disconnect and disable Bluetooth on other devices.
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If the device had successfully paired to the Mac, but can't be reconnected to, click the information icon, select Forget This Device, and re-pair the device.
VoiceOver setup
To set up voiceOver on your iOS device:
- Navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver and toggle to On.
Note
VoiceOver overrides common gestures used to navigate a device. When VoiceOver is enabled, you must use VoiceOver gestures on the device.
For a list of common VoiceOver gestures, click here.
VoiceOver on Kobiton devices
- On the physical device, navigate to Settings > Bluetooth; enable Bluetooth.
- On the physical device, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > VoiceOver; enable VoiceOver.
- Scroll down, click Audio and enable Send to HDMI.
- Back on the Kobiton portal, enable the VoiceOver icon.
- Start testing.
Supported Commands
| VoiceOver gesture | On-screen equivalent |
|---|---|
| Activate selected item | double-tap |
| Double-tap selected item | triple-tap |
| Select next item | swipe right |
| Select previous item | swipe left |
| perform or move to the next selected option | swipe up or down |
| Pause/resume speech | two-finger tap |
| Special action | two-finger double tap |
| Open item chooser | two-finger triple tap |
| Read all content from the first object in selected area | two-finger swipe up |
| Read all content from selected item | two-finger swipe down |
| Go back, cancel, close pop-up | two-finger scrub back-and-forth |
| Select / deselect | two-finger pinch out/in |
| Speak current page number and position | three-finger tap |
| Toggle speech on/off | three-finger double-tap |
| Toggle screen curtain on/off | three-finger triple-tap |
| Move to next horizontal screen page | three-finger swipe left |
| Move to previous horizontal screen page | three-finger swipe right |
| Move/scroll down a page | three-finger swipe up |
| Move/scroll up a page | three-finger swipe down |
| Switch to next/previous app | four-finger swipe left/right |
| Open or close multitask pane | four-finger swipe up/down |
| Go to home screen | four-finger pinch in |
Known Limitations
- VoiceOver gestures is not available on Android devices.
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VoiceOver is only available on iOS 12.0 and later, iOS devices that have the the Send to HDMI option.
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A macOS GEM connects to a limited number of Bluetooth devices. In practice, VoiceOver works best when only two to three devices are connected at a time.
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Cannot perform mixed actions between Rotor Commands. We can only perform one action at a time. Will enhance this in upcoming releases.