Learning to navigate the office ribbons In office 2010 and now in office 2013 we have all of the Microsoft Office suite of applications controlled by the "office ribbons" as they are known as. For those of us who are visually impaired it is hard to understand how this new method of accessing features in a particular product such as Microsoft Word are any more beneficial than the original menus. The idea of the ribbons are that you can access multiple groups of features within a combined title such as for example "Home" or "Insert" or "View". As I explained in earlier tutorials on the ribbons each of the main ribbons have gathered together functions that in some way, relate to one another and are contained under a particular heading such as previously mentioned. Navigating ribbons Let's now open up the first of those previously written tutorials which deals with the "Home ribbon" and the groups contained within it. I have attached the particular tutorial to this email lesson so go into the list of attachments of which there are only one and open it up. Microsoft Word should now open up on your computer screen and the first tutorial should be there for you to read through and learn what is available in the home ribbon. Now let's look at how we can access the home ribbon and move through its various features as follows; 1. While in the home ribbon lesson, press the "Left alt key" just once. Notes: Your screen reader should announce "Home". 2. Now press the "Down arrow" just once. Notes: You have now opened up the home ribbon and are entering its different groups of features. 3. Now press the "Tab key" and as you press the tab key just listen to what your screen reader announces to you. Notes: Press the tab key slowly and give yourself a chance to hear the different items contained within the home ribbon. 4. When you have finished looking through the home ribbon and you'll know you have as your screen reader will announce, "Minimise ribbon" just press the "Escape key" once to exit out and back into your document. 5. Now read through the relevant tutorial and try and understand the relationship between each group of items that are contained within the home ribbon, then go back into the home ribbon and locate the items that you are reading about. Navigating the various controls in the ribbon When you enter the ribbons you will encounter various controls such as buttons, dropdown buttons, split buttons, combo boxes, list boxes and radio buttons. The question is how do you know what to do with a particular control when you encounter it? what should be your next action? Let's take a look at some of the controls encountered in a ribbon and how to deal with it. 1. First go into the home ribbon using the technique thought earlier in this lesson. Q. What are the first three controls you come upon within the home ribbon? As you tabbed through it. A. "Paste button, unavailable." "Cut button, unavailable" "Copy button, unavailable" The above mentioned three controls should have been what you came across. The first thing to notice about the above items you came across is that they are "buttons" and say quite clearly that they are buttons. This should indicate to you that these three buttons do only one action, that for which they are clearly marked for, "Paste, Cut and Copy". These buttons do nothing more than this action. Pressing the "Spacebar" on one of these buttons will perform that action if it is "Available" to do so. Q. Why are these controls currently "unavailable"? A. If you said that they are unavailable because currently nothing is selected within the document such as text or other items then you are correct. For the above three buttons to be available there would have to be something in the main document selected. Notes: Go and see how to select text and then go back into the home ribbon and see if the status of the buttons has changed! Notes: The examples shown above are intended to demonstrate the purpose of "buttons". There are other types of buttons in the ribbons that have multiple actions as we will see later in this tutorial. Scrollable Edit Boxes As we explore more of the home ribbon we come to the "Headings group" which have scrollable edit boxes. One of the reasons I recommend that you use the "Tab key" to move through the contents of the ribbons is that should you encounter one of these edit boxes and if you are navigating using the arrow keys then you will get stuck in that edit box and not know what's happening, whereas the tab key will move through such boxes more efficiently and with less difficulty. The first scrollable edit box in the headings section will allow us to choose a style of font that we would like. We can either go with the default or when we land in the edit box we can use our "arrow keys" to move up or down through this list. When you have selected your choice of font style with the arrow keys, press enter to select it and jump back into the document where you wish to begin typing. After having selected a font style, if we press the "Tab key" once more we will land in the "Size edit box" and again using the "arrow keys" we can up or down arrow to the desired size of the font that we want it to be. Press the "Enter key" on this choice to select it and move back into the document where we are going to begin typing. Notes: Practice doing this by carrying out the following exercise; 1. Open up a blank Microsoft document. You can do this if you have Word opened by pressing keys, "Control + Letter N" for new document and a new blank page will pop up. 2. Now you are placed by default at the top of the new blank document. 3. Go into the "Home ribbon" and tab over to the first "Scrollable edit box" and press the down arrow to "Times new roman" then press the "Tab key" once again and choose a size using the arrow keys, normally I like size 12 or 14 for my text if it's just for reading purposes. 4. Finally Press the "Enter key" once and you are back on the first line in your blank document. 5. Now type in a meaningful piece of text of your choice and when you have done this, press the "Enter key" once, then press the "up arrow" once. You are now back on the line of text you just typed in. Notes: If you are a jaws user or an NVDA user then use the keys, "Insert key + F" to hear your screen reader indicate to you information about the line of text you just typed in. It will tell you information such as the type of font, the size of the font, if the text is centered on the screen etc. To close out of the document you just typed into use keys, "Control + F4" to return you to the previous document you were reading. The Menu Sub Menu Control After taking a look at the scrollable edit boxes we will use the tab key to move along and we will encounter more "button controls" which will perform various tasks before we arrive at a curious little control called the "Menu, sub menu" control". There are a few of these menus scattered throughout the different ribbons and we can access them by pressing the "Spacebar" key on it to open up what features it contains. In this example we will look at two of those menus; *. Change case, sub menu. *. Text effects and topography menu. Both these menus can be found within the "Font group" of the home ribbon. Press the spacebar on either of them and press the "Down arrow key or up arrow key" to find out what they contain. Press the "escape key" to be placed back on that actual menu in its closed form and you can continue moving along through the other controls of the ribbon at this point. As you move through not only the home ribbon but any of the other office ribbons then you'll find these little menus scattered throughout its system. More about button controls Earlier on we looked at the use of a button to activate the paste, cut and copy. I mentioned that these buttons performed only one task which was indicated to you when you tabbed onto them but there are more sophisticated buttons available, some called dropdown buttons and others called Split buttons. We will first take a look at the "Split button" which when pressed using the "Spacebar" will place us in different items in this case such as a list of items like a list of font types in a word processor or a list containing size values for a font we wish to use, it could be anything. If you go into the "Home ribbon" again and tab over through the Font group you will encounter the following split buttons; *. Text highlight colour split button. You can choose the kind of highlight colours you want when you move through the text. *. Font colour split button. Places you in a list of available colours which you can have your font appear in. *. Font split button. "This places you onto a list of different font types. Split buttons can place you on various elements within the ribbon structure and could be likened to taking a shortcut to get to elements such as lists, combo boxes and other controls somewhere else in the ribbon. Notes: Remember to use the "Spacebar" on these buttons to activate them. Press the "Escape key" to exit out of them. Dropdown buttons The Drop-Down Button consists of a button that when clicked displays a drop-down list of mutually exclusive items. This means that the items are in some way linked to each other such as a font set etc. This control is useful for exposing closely related items in cases where no obvious default is available and where the individual items can be represented by an image, text, or both. These dropdown buttons can be found dispersed through the office ribbon structure and while in Office 2010 JAWS13, 14 and 15 will indicate to you the difference between dropdown buttons and split buttons, JAWS 13, 14 and 15 such as it is at the writing of this document doesn't indicate the difference between dropdown and split buttons in 2013. Buttons that activate dialogue boxes Occasionally as we move through some of the ribbons for example the "Insert ribbon" we will come across a button where our screen reader will announce, "Button DotDotDot". This kind of button is called a "Dialogue box button" because when you activate it with the "Spacebar" it will open up a screen which has multiple controls. For example when you open up the "Save As" screen or even the "Print" dialogue box to print off a document you will notice that you have more than one control present on the screen. If you don't believe that then next time you use the Save As dialogue box, press the "Tab key" and you'll see how many different items it contains by way of settings which can be altered. This is what's known as a dialogue box and again you'll come across such a Dialogue button from time to time in some of the ribbons. For example in the "Insert ribbon" you have the following; *. Pictures DotDotDot Button. *. Chart DotDotDot Button. *. Online Video DotDotDot Button. The above are just a few examples of dialogue box buttons. Keep in mind what it means when you access a dialogue box via one of these buttons. You will have multiple choice settings to choose from. -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. SPAMfighter has removed 182 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len Do you have a slow PC? Try a Free scan http://www.spamfighter.com/SLOW-PCfighter?cid=sigen --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! 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The Home Ribbon In MS Word.docx
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