Full Transcript
Pete Lane:
Hi, folks. Pete Lane. Welcome to Blind Abilities and welcome to another iPhone 101 demo. Today we explore selecting, copying, and pasting text in iOS.
Pete Lane:
I want to share today a process that I use that will demonstrate a couple of tips and a quirk or two in the tech selection process that might just save you a little bit of time and effort.
Pete Lane:
But before I explain my process using the rotor, I want to share a quick alternative. This is done by using the three-finger quadruple tap, which is just as it sounds, tapping three fingers on your iPhone screen four times, and I’ll demonstrate it in just a moment, but this can be used for short pieces of text, sentences, phrases, things along those lines that you want to quickly grab, save to the clipboard, and then paste somewhere else for later use, such as a note, an email, or a text message.
Pete Lane:
And here’s an example of a Facebook post. If you’ve ever heard a Facebook post that you just wanted to grab very quickly without having to go through all of the rotor gyrations, all you have to do is use the three-finger quadruple tap. Let me first flick it to the Facebook post that I want to copy.
Voiceover:
Gibson under fire for destroying hundreds of new guitars. Intense guitar, vertical line, guitar, news, reviews, videos, and interviews. Gibson came under fire in August 2019 for destroying hundreds of unsold guitars. Intenseguitar.net, about this website, link.
Pete Lane:
Now this includes a brief description of the article as well as a URL or a web link, but instead of going through all of the rotor twists and turns, all I need to do is use the three-finger quadruple tap, and again to clarify, tapping three fingers on the screen four times fairly quickly as follows, one, two, three, four.
Voiceover:
Gibson under fire for destroying hundreds of new guitars. Intense guitar, guitar news, reviews, videos, and interviews. Gibson came under fire in August 2019 for destroying hundreds of unsold guitars. Intenseguitar.net, about this website. Link copied to pasteboard.
Pete Lane:
And as you heard voiceover say, the link is now copied to pasteboard. If I go to my mail app.
Voiceover:
App switcher, Facebook, active, Mail, active.
Pete Lane:
There it is.
Voiceover:
Actions of mail.
Pete Lane:
If I want to start a fresh email, I’ll go to the bottom of my inbox.
Voiceover:
Compose button.
Pete Lane:
There’s my compose.
Voiceover:
To text field is editing.
Pete Lane:
I’m going to skip through the address and headings fields.
Voiceover:
Message body, text field.
Pete Lane:
And I will double tap to set my insertion point.
Voiceover:
Insertion point at end.
Pete Lane:
And now I will go to my rotor, the one time I need to do so, and look for edit.
Voiceover:
Characters, actions, edit.
Pete Lane:
And I will flick up until I find the paste option.
Voiceover:
Italic, paste.
Pete Lane:
There it is. I will perform a single finger double tap to paste a text from the clipboard into this email.
Voiceover:
Gibson under fire for destroying hundreds of new guitars. Intense guitar, vertical line, guitar news, reviews, videos, and interviews. Gibson came under fire in August 2019 for destroying hundreds of unsold guitars. Intenseguitar.net, about this website. Link, paste.
Pete Lane:
As you heard, the entire text that I had copied to the clipboard was pasted into this new email, and it was a very quick thing, so you have to be careful and you need to listen to your voiceover hints. Whatever voiceover has last spoken will be copied to the clipboard by use of the three-finger quadruple tap. It’s a quick and easy way to copy text and then subsequently paste it to another item, an email, or a note, or something similar.
Pete Lane:
Now let’s demonstrate the full use of the rotor for selecting, copying, and pasting text.
Pete Lane:
My process involves sending out emails to a group of people, selecting and copying something from another source, and pasting it into the body of that email. That’s what I want to demonstrate for you now.
Pete Lane:
For this purpose, I have an email currently open. Let me read a little bit of this email for you right now. I’m going to use a two-finger swipe down to read all.
Voiceover:
July 13th at 11:06 a.m. There was an online fillable.PDF. It is available at this address under the fillable PDF application link http//www.jaxpubliclibrary.org/lib/talkingbooks.html. Link.
Pete Lane:
I’ll pause voiceover right there. Hopefully the speech was not too fast for you. What I’ll need to do is select that portion of this email, then copy it and take it over to my other email and paste it in. Now the process of selecting text begins with your rotor, and if you have not already selected text selection to be included in your rotor, you’ll need to do that by going into your settings app, double tapping on general, then accessibility, then voiceover, and then flick down to rotor where you’ll see a long list of actions that can be selected or not to be included in your rotor. Toward the end of that list, you’ll find text selection. Double tap on it to select it, get out of your settings app, and then your rotor will include text selection.
Pete Lane:
Before I go to my rotor to find my text selection feature, I need to get to the beginning of the first line that I want to select. So let me go back in my email.
Voiceover:
Message. There was an online fillable.PDF.
Pete Lane:
There we go. We’re at the beginning of the first sentence, actually on the first line of the email, and that’s where I’ll want to begin my text selection. Now let me turn my router until I find the text selection feature.
Voiceover:
Language, text selection.
Pete Lane:
There we have it. Now there are several options from which I need to choose which unit to use, and I’ll review those options by swiping down.
Voiceover:
Page selection.
Pete Lane:
Page.
Voiceover:
Select all.
Pete Lane:
Select all.
Voiceover:
Character selection, word selection, line selection.
Pete Lane:
And that’s all of them. Now I don’t want to select the entire email and I don’t want to have to select one character or one word at a time. So I think I’ll go to my line selection and that’s where I’m currently sitting. We’ll need to swipe right to expand our selection. I’ll swipe right.
Voiceover:
There’s an online fillable.PDF. It is available at selected.
Pete Lane:
There’s the first line of the sentence that I want to select. I’ll swipe a second time.
Voiceover:
This address under the fillable PDF, selected.
Pete Lane:
Again.
Voiceover:
Application link selected. http//www.jaxpubliclibrary.org/lib/talkingbooks. Selected.
Pete Lane:
Good. Now I have selected the sentence that I want to copy. I’ll now need to go to my edit function in the rotor to get to the copy action. Let me turn the rotor.
Voiceover:
Links, text selection, edit.
Pete Lane:
And there I am at edit. Now let’s swipe down and see what options are available for me.
Voiceover:
Select all, share, copy.
Pete Lane:
There’s copy. That’s what I want. Now instead of swiping to the right to perform this action, I will double tap.
Voiceover:
There is an online fillable.PDF. It is available at this address under the fillable PDF application link, http//www.jaxpubliclibrary.org/lib/talkingbooks. Copied.
Pete Lane:
As you heard voiceover say, it read the sentence and then it said copied. So now I’ll need to close this email by using my four-finger single tap at the top of the email.
Voiceover:
Inbox two, back button.
Pete Lane:
And I’ll double tap on inbox.
Voiceover:
Inbox two.
Pete Lane:
Now I need to get to the email that I want to use toward the top of my inbox. I’ll swipe several times to get to the email that I want to use.
Voiceover:
Edit button, search field, unread. Amazon, Pete Reminder, iOS session scheduled for this Wednesday.
Pete Lane:
And I’ll do a two-finger single tap to stop voiceover. What I’ll do here is select this email and I’ll do so by double tapping.
Voiceover:
Selected. Pete, hi, all.
Pete Lane:
Now what I want to do is reply to all and then delete the body of the email and the subject line, paste in what’s currently on my clipboard, and send it out to the group. So my first step here will be to go to the bottom of the screen and look for the reply button.
Voiceover:
Reply button.
Pete Lane:
There we have it. I’ll double tap.
Voiceover:
Reply alert, reply button.
Pete Lane:
I’ll swipe to the right.
Voiceover:
Reply all button.
Pete Lane:
And I’ll double tap on reply all.
Voiceover:
Reply all, reminder, access session scheduled for this Wednesday.
Pete Lane:
Now what I need to do is get into the body of the email and delete the text that’s in that body now. So let me get to the body.
Voiceover:
Message body, text field, is editing character mode. On August 5th.
Pete Lane:
Now I want to be sure where my insertion point is, so I’ll do a single-finger double tap.
Voiceover:
Insertion point at end.
Pete Lane:
My insertion point is at the end and I want it to be at the start. So I’ll single-finger double tap again.
Voiceover:
Insertion point at start.
Pete Lane:
Good. You would think that in order to delete the entire body of this email that I would go to the text selection menu. So, let’s give that a try, and I’ll turn to my rotor until I get to text selection.
Voiceover:
Edit, typing mode, text selection.
Pete Lane:
There we go. So, let’s get to the option that I think I’ll need to do. I’ll swipe down with one finger.
Voiceover:
Page selection. Select all.
Pete Lane:
Now I think select all would logically be the option that I want to select. I’ll swipe right to do this.
Voiceover:
On August 5th at 4:18 p.m. Pete Lane <PeteLane7625@gmail.com.
Pete Lane:
And I’ll stop voiceover, but it appears to have selected all of the text in this particular document. Now logic would tell me that if I press the delete button, all of the text will be deleted.
Pete Lane:
You know that there’s an onscreen keyboard at the bottom of the screen, and the delete button is in the bottom right portion of that keyboard, and I’ll search for it now.
Voiceover:
Delete.
Pete Lane:
Now I’ll double tap, and we’ll see if it deletes the entire body of the email. Now let me touch back up to the body of the email.
Voiceover:
Message body, on August 5th at 4:18 PM Pete Lane <.
Pete Lane:
And I’ll stop voiceover with the two-finger single tap. As you hear, the body of the email was not in fact deleted. This seems to be a quirk in the text selection.
Pete Lane:
As an alternative, there is a work around, and let me turn to my edit function in the router.
Voiceover:
Edit.
Pete Lane:
And let’s swipe and see what our options are here that might help us in this situation.
Voiceover:
Add attachment, select, paste, select all.
Pete Lane:
Select all. That seems to be a good option. Let me double tap.
Voiceover:
Select all.
Pete Lane:
I believe that I’ve selected all of the text in this open email. Now, let me look for my delete button and see if we can delete it.
Voiceover:
Delete.
Pete Lane:
I’ll double tap. No clue from voiceover. Now let me touch back up in the email.
Voiceover:
Subject re reminder iOS session.
Pete Lane:
And let me swipe to the right and see what we have in the body of the email.
Voiceover:
Message body text field is editing, new line, insertion point at start.
Pete Lane:
And we have nothing.
Pete Lane:
To clarify what we’ve just established, using the text selection feature in the rotor to select all of the text in an open email and then using the delete button on the onscreen keyboard to delete it does not appear to work properly. So as a work around, go over to your edit function in your rotor, arrow down to select all, double-tap, and then double tap on your delete button in the onscreen keyboard. And that seems to work.
Pete Lane:
Now, we want to paste the information that I copied to my clipboard into this open email. So let me turn to my edit function again.
Voiceover:
Edit.
Pete Lane:
And we will swipe down with one finger until we find the paste option.
Voiceover:
Add attachment, paste.
Pete Lane:
There we go. I’ll single-finger, double tap.
Voiceover:
Bottom of document.
Pete Lane:
And now let’s see what’s in our email.
Voiceover:
Subject, August 10th, Message body text field is editing. There is an online fillable.PDF. It is available at this address under the fillable PDF application link: http://www.jaxpubliclibrary.org/lib/talkingbooks. Insertion point at end.
Pete Lane:
Good. It pasted in the sentence that I copied from the other email. Now all I need to do is type in a clarifying sentence or two, go up to the top of my email to send it, and the group will have the information that I want them to have.
Pete Lane:
I hope this clarifies how the process of selecting text works using the rotor, and I hope it points out a quirk in that text selection process that might bog you down if you have to perform the same type of an action. Also, I hope you find uses for the three-finger quadruple tap to pick up quick phrases, sentences, words, email addresses, and other short items rather than using all of the gyrations in the rotor. If you have any questions, why don’t you share them with me? Send an email to info@blindabilities.com and Jeff or I would be happy to respond. I appreciate your listening. Thanks so much and have a great day.
Pete Lane:
For more podcasts with the Blindness Perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com.
Speaker 3:
We’re on Twitter.
Speaker 4:
We’re on Facebook.
Pete Lane:
And be sure to check out our free app.
Speaker 4:
In the Apple App Store.
Speaker 3:
And the Google Play Store.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
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[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
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Jeff Thompson:
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