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Hey, everyone, this is Chris, and I'm here with a digital mouthful. Yes, I know this is Digital Bites.
But you know how it goes. You have something you want to share, and it's a little bit longer. So I teach a lot of people.
Most of whom use voiceover, but sometimes I will teach somebody visually. Maybe they have enough vision and they want to learn the iPhone visually and they're not ready for voiceover. Or I'm helping a friend, a neighbor, an older person who is new to the iPhone.
They're just sort of have basic knowledge. So a lot of times the icons.
Are actually pictures only with no text, no words. If I say to open a particular app or if I'm in an app to click a particular button, I may think it actually says the words, but it really doesn't. So I thought I'd give you a rundown of the icons on the iPhone home screen, assuming that you're running a later version of the iOS. Sometimes the patterns vary depending on which iOS you're using. And then also I would like to describe the icons in the mail app so in case you're working with someone who is visual and they say, oh, you mean the pencil icon. Okay, I didn't know it was a.
Pencil icon, but we'll get there. So what I did was I asked my friend, Mr. Chatgpt, if he would.
Describe the icons on the home screen. And I also got aira to confirm that those descriptions were correct. And for almost all of them, they were.
So we'll start with the phone app.
Strangely enough, it is a phone. This is a green icon with a white phone handset.
Then there is Safari, which I didn't.
Know was blue and white. It's a compass icon.
And then we have the messages app.
This is a green icon with a white speech bubble. That makes sense.
And then the mail icon is blue.
With a white envelope. Now, that could have meant messages to me. So it's good for me to know that the mail icon, you know, you've.
Got mail, it's an envelope.
So that's what you have here. Then we have the calendar, which is.
A white icon with a current Date.
Which is in red and black text.
So it's going to open your Apple calendar.
Then we have photos. This is a white icon with a multicolored flower shape and I guess the petals are kind of rainbow colored.
Aira told me the camera icon is.
Gray with a camera lens image. That makes sense. A lot of these do make sense, but it's cool to know the differences. Maps is a white icon with a stylized map including a blue route line. So it's going to show you a line like from one point to another.
Then we have the Clock app with.
A black icon with a clock face showing the current time. Weather. It doesn't even say weather. None of these say anything. This is a blue icon with a white cloud and a yellow sun. News is a white icon with a red stylized N. So that's going to.
Open your Apple news app Store is.
A blue icon with a white A and the A is made of popsicle sticks.
I thought that was amusing for sure.
Then we have the Notes app which is yellow and white and it looks like a notepad. Reminders is a white icon with colored dots and lines resembling a checklist. Then we have Stocks which is a black icon with a jagged line chart. Then we have Books, an orange icon with an open white book. Next is the health app which is a white icon with a red heart shape. So that's your health data tracking to access your medical records. The Wallet app is a black icon with layers of cards.
You know how many ever credit cards you might have.
Settings is a gray gear icon with, you know, gear wheels that opens your iPhone. Settings Translate is a white icon with a blue and black speech bubble. And finally we have the dock at the bottom which is the same on all of your screens.
And it has the traditionally if you've.
Not changed anything, it has the phone.
Safari messages and then music. And the Music app is a red icon with a white music note.
Now depending on what version of the iOS you have, sometimes the colors were different. On the second page of your home screen you have FaceTime which is a green icon with a white video camera symbol. Then you have Contacts which is a gray icon with a silhouette of a.
Person on a white background.
Then we have Find my which is a gray icon with a radar like circle. So locating airtags and devices and such files is a white icon with a blue folder. So that's a cool app to use. And then we have Shortcuts which is dark blue and pink overlapping shapes. So that's used to create the automations or Quick actions for apps and functions. The TV app is a black icon.
With the word TV in white and a white apple icon on the left. The Home app is a white icon.
With an orange house and I'm not sure why the house is orange. I would have chosen a different color.
But that makes it stand out for.
All your home automation type things. Fitness is a white icon with a ring like graphic in red, green and blue so that tracks your movement, exercise, standing, activity, etc. The tips app is a yellow icon.
With a white light bulb with a.
Lowercase T in the center. That's for offering hints and suggestions for using your iPhone features. Voice Memos is a black icon with a red waveform. I really enjoy the Voice Memos app. Very handy. Then we have the Measure app, which is a black icon with a ruler graphic. That makes sense. And of course it's used to use the camera to measure real world objects and spaces. And then we have the Compass, which is a black icon with a white.
Compass needle and it has N, E.
S and W. I was asking Ira, how is this different than the Safari app, which is a compass. The Safari icon does not have the N, E, S and W. They're both, you know, compass related.
But certainly the World Wide Web is kind of indicating that we have Internet from everywhere.
And this is just the regular Compass app. The Magnifier app is a black icon with a magnifying glass, which makes sense. And it has a yellow plus sign in the middle.
That is kind of cool.
The Watch app is a black icon with the side view of the Apple Watch.
So you can manage your Apple Watch from there.
Then there's the Utilities folder. This is a gray folder icon and it contains extra Apple tools. The Voice memos can be in there.
As well as Compass, measure and calculator.
And some of those apps may also be on your home screen as we've described.
They may also be in the Extras folder.
The Extras folder may not be on.
By default on your screen in iOS 17 or later, but older setups might have that.
ChatGPT says, Alrighty. And of course then you have the dock at the bottom. So then I asked it to describe the icons in the Mail app because a lot of times I'm teaching people visually and they say, oh, you mean.
That arrow pointing to the icon, you know, right? Or the arrow pointing up? And I'm like, I don't know, it's.
On the top right corner. So Anyway, I asked ChatGPT this and it indicates that this description focuses on the main Symbols rather than text based labels and is intended to guide navigation.
By touch for screen reader users.
So the top of the screen you.
Have the back button. Now I always thought when I first started using the iPhone that it actually said the word back, but it doesn't.
So it's in the upper left corner. It's a left pointing arrow. And if you're non visual, you may not know this. Every time Voiceover says this, it just.
Says back and often followed by the.
Name of the previous mailbox or folder that you're going back to. The new message icon is located in.
The right corner, the bottom right corner.
And this is a square with a pencil or pen diagonally inside of it. So if someone says, oh, you mean the pencil icon? That could maybe mean to me edit.
Which, which is not the case. But it's good to know that this.
Is the new message or compose new message.
So then you have your blank email.
Open the message list, view the unread message indicator. This appears to the left of each message in the list and it's a blue dot. So in case somebody wonders what those blue dots are, those are the unread messages. And of course Voiceover does say the word unread. And this very helpful Description generated by ChatGPT says, what VoiceOver is going to say. Voiceover reads this as unread. Then of course there's a flag icon if you want to flag a message. And of course it's going to appear as a flag and it's highlighted. The attachment icon is a paperclip symbol. And so you want to attach something.
That'S what you're going to find.
There's a chevron or disclosure indicator, which is a right pointing arrow. It appears at the far right of.
A message and it's not announced. But what happens is when you double tap on it, of course the message opens.
So you get the preview and then you have the message open. There's a toolbar at the bottom.
And so when you're viewing a single message, you have some things at the.
Bottom you have a trash can, which.
Voiceover is gonna say trash.
And then we have reply, which is.
A left pointing arrow. So that's good to know.
And so when I teach, I would say, okay, the left pointing arrow is.
Gonna be reply, and then you're gonna have options.
And then there's reply all, which are two curved arrows pointing to the left. The next thing is forward, which is a curved arrow pointing right. So Voiceover reads this of course as forward. Then we have archive, which is A.
Box with a down pointing arrow Move.
Which is a folder icon. So Voiceover is going to read this as Move, of course. Then there's the more actions, which is a circle with three horizontal dots or the word more.
Voiceover is going to say more, and.
This opens, of course, additional options. Then we have a search field at.
The top, which is a magnifying glass icon.
And Voiceover is going to read this as search, and it's going to open a text field so you can search for something. The send button, the top right corner.
And it looks like a blue circle with a white upward pointing arrow inside of it. And this arrow is aimed slightly to the right, resembling the shape of a.
Paper airplane or a launch arrow.
When you're composing a new message, the Send button is located where it was just mentioned to be, and it only.
Becomes active when you have at least one recipient in the to field. If you don't have anything in the to field, that button will be grayed out. There's also an Edit button, which is.
Actually a plain text word that appears.
It's not a graphic, and it appears in the top right corner of the screen when you're viewing a mailbox such as your inbox.
And of course it is read as edit.
And then when you double tap it, there are little checkboxes that appear next to each email message. So these are used to select the messages for actions such as delete, move, or mark. And then the edit button, of course, changes to cancel when you are done with that process.
So I hope this was helpful.
I found it very insightful to know what things look like, especially if I'm.
Teaching or I'm helping people who are.
New to the iPhone especially.
I want to be very descriptive, of.
Course, if someone's not using Voiceover.
So I know this was a digital mouthful, but I hope you found it educational and helpful.
Here is an easy way to restart your device using Siri. So what you want to do is activate Siri, then say, restart my device. Then it will prompt you for a second option which will say, are you sure you want to restart your device? You say, yes, and then it restarts your device and then it comes back up and you're good to go. Just that easy, not having to go through or navigate through any menus. So if you're looking to restart your device quickly, there you go.
Hello everybody, this is Desiree, and today I want to show you how to use Windows voice dictation. I didn't actually know about this very much until I happened upon it from someone's post on Mastodon. So now it's kind of neat. So in any text field, whether it's a word file, a notepad file, an Outlook message, or any kind of text entry field, you are able to dictate to Windows and it will type for you. So I want to show you how this works. So I'm going to start with an empty word document.
Document one word. To move to an item, press the arrow keys Document one word blank.
So as you can hear, there's nothing in the document. Now, I have set this up so that all I have to do is press the Windows key and H at the same time. H is for help or help me talk or not sure how to remember that. So I'm going to press that and then it's going to make a chime sound and I can start dictating. Hello, comma, how are you today? Hopefully this will work, period. And then I pressed Windows H again to stop the dictation and you could hear the chiming. So when the chime goes up in tone, that means it's dictating or recording your voice. And when it goes down, it stops. So now I'm going to up arrow.
Hello, how are you today? Hopefully this will work.
Okay, so that seems to work. Let's see if it got my punctuation in there.
Hello, comma, how are you today? Question. Hopefully this will work. Blank. Blank.
I'm not sure if I said period at the end, but I put one anyway. That's the nice thing is you can go back and edit it, but it just kind of makes it quicker if you prefer talking over typing. Now, to set this up, you want to make sure that your Windows settings are correct. So to check that you do Windows.
I to get to settings settings search.
Box, find a setting edit type in text.
Now I find it easier to tab and choose the accessibility tab.
So I tab first home one of 12 to move and I know accessibility.
Is toward the end, so I'm going.
To press the end key Windows Update 12 of 12 and then up arrow.
Privacy Accessibility 10 of 12.
Now press Enter Accessibility Accessibility and then.
I want to pick the speech area.
So I'm going to tab Accessibility button.
1 of 1 list box Vision text.
Size So I tab twice.
Now I'm going to arrow down until.
I hear speech Visual effects mouse point.
Text magnify color fill contrast Theme Narrator A Hearing odd hearing the caption interaction speech 1 of 4 To move to.
An item pressed there's speech. I'm gonna press enter speech Voice access.
Voice access button off. To activate press space bar.
Now you want to make sure voice access is on, so press space here.
On Voice Access Microphone sleep My microphone.
Is asleep because I'm not actually using it. So it kind of goes to sleep until you hit that Windows H to wake it up. But I want to make sure I have the correct microphone selected.
So I'm going to tab Voice Access.
Microphone sleep button to settings button. To activate press space bar and I'm.
Going to press space into the settings menu.
Select default microphone sub menu 1 of 4. To move through items, press up or down arrow.
So now I'm going to open the sub menu. So I'm going to press the right arrow.
Microphone array 2 Intel registered smart sound technology for digital microphones 1 of 4 video call L R3 Ficusrite USB audio checked.
Okay, so I have my Focusrite Vocaster selected by default, but I can change that in this area. So if I want my PC microphone or whatever microphone I have plugged in to be used, if I have a headset microphone, I can do that as well. So that's where you would set that up. And then you would just press escape.
Select default microphone sub menu. What leaving menu.
And then I can go back to.
My Word file document.
One word.
Now I'm going to start on a brand new line here and I'm going to press Windows H. Okay, I am back.
Period.
Let's see how this goes.
Period.
Hello. Okay, I am back. See how this goes.
So it didn't get everything. That's why you always have to check. The other thing that happens is that sometimes when you say explanation mark, it doesn't actually write an exclamation mark. So I have to go in and manually put that in. One of the other nice things it does if you have a Braille display hooked up is you can actually watch the words go across the braille display. So you'll know when you're dictating if the words are going across or not. So that is how you use voice dictation on Windows.