Drag-and-Drop with VoiceOver

by Josh de Lioncourt

Editor’s Note: The functionality discussed in this guide is only available in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or later. VoiceOver’s drag-and-drop facility was not implemented until 10.5.0, and is not available in earlier versions of the operating system.

Basics

Drag-and-Drop has long been a difficult function to replicate in a meaningful way for screen reader users of any platform. No screen reading solution handles it the same way, and few have ever implemented a good method.

To fully understand how to use VoiceOver’s drag-and-drop facility, it is important to understand exactly what drag-and-drop is.

Drag-and-drop is the function of visually moving one item on top of another on your computer’s screen. How, in which application, and with what items, will all have a bearing on the result of the drag-and-drop action. Typically, the item being dropped will have some procedure performed on it by the item it is being dropped onto. You can equate this to real-world objects by imagining a frying pan. If you pick up a frying pan and place it on a lit stove burner, the stove burner will heat the pan.

Common Uses of Drag-and-Drop

Some common uses of drag-and-drop are to copy folders from one location to another, add songs to playlists in iTunes, or to place mailboxes inside other mailboxes in Mail. Some uses for drag-and-drop have alternative methods to accomplish the same result, (i.e. using Copy and Paste commands to copy files from one location to another), but others have no simple alternative. In such cases, it is good to understand VoiceOver’s drag-and-drop functionality.

The Steps

Here are the steps to perform a drag-and-drop with VoiceOver.

1. Using VoiceOver navigation commands, move to the item you want to drag.
2. Press VO-Command-F5 to move the mouse pointer to the location of the VoiceOver cursor. You can verify you have done this correctly with VO-F5 to hear what is under the mouse.
3. Begin the drag action with VO-Command-Shift-Space. you will hear the click of a mouse being pressed, but not released.
4. Turn off Cursor Tracking with VO-Shift-F3.
5. Using VoiceOver navigation commands, move to the location where you want to drop the item you are dragging.
6. Use VO-Command-F5 again to move the mouse cursor to the location of the VoiceOver cursor. You can press VO-F5 to verify you have done this correctly and hear what is currently under the mouse.
7. Press VO-Command-Shift-Space to release the item being dragged. You will hear the click of a mouse being released.
8. Turn your cursor tracking back on with VO-Shift-F3.

Why Do I Have to Turn off Cursor Tracking?

In some cases you may not need to turn off cursor tracking. In most scenarios, though, the change of selected items may cause the item you are dragging to disappear from the screen, and the drag will fail. Turning off cursor tracking will prevent this from happening.

An example of when this problem might arise is in iTunes. If you start a drag action on a song in the Songs table, and then move to a playlist in the Sources table with cursor tracking on, the highlight in the Sources table will change to the playlist, and the contents of the Songs table will then reflect the contents of the playlist. The song you wanted to drag-and-drop is no longer visible to be dragged.

What Limitations Are There?

At present, VoiceOver is unable to drag-and-drop to the Dock.

Notes

When keyboard commands include "VO", as in "VO-Command-Shift-Space", it refers to the VoiceOver keys, Control and Option.