11.5

“Voice-Pressing” Keys

At times, you may wish to press a key or two on your keyboard; you can use Dragon to “voice-press” them.

TIP Common accelerator keys for Windows operating systems include: Esc to close a window, Enter to active

the item which has the focus, Tab to move the focus forward, and Shift Tab to move the focus backward. Most

buttons, menus and checkboxes have an underlined letter in their label: you can activate them by pressing the

underlined letter (if underlines are not visible, press Alt first.) For accelerator keys specific to a particular

application, search the application’s Help or the Internet.

Dragon lets you “voice-type” any key on your keyboard. Just say press or type followed by the name of the

key(s): any letter or number, but also Page Up, Home, Enter, Tab, Caps Lock, F2, Control, Alt, Shift...

For instance:

Say press spacebar to select or unselect a checkbox.

Say press F5 or press Function 5 to refresh the view.

Say press Alt e to “click” a button labeled with an underlined ‘e’.

Say press Control f to open the Find dialog box in most applications.

Say press Escape to “escape” out of a window.

Say press Alt Down to open a drop-down list.

To undo a keystroke, you can say undo that.

Exercise 2: Observe the Find and Replace dialog box below and its controls: tabs, drop-down lists, checkboxes,

and buttons. Answer the following questions (think of “voice-typing” as well as “voice-clicking”

options), then open a similar dialog in your word processor and practice navigating it by voice.

 How could you place the insertion point in the Find field? How could you go to the other tabs?

 Which control currently has the focus? How could you move the focus to the Find Next button?

 How could you close this dialog box?