Sending a Text Message iOS 8
iFocus Program
Sending a Text Message iOS 8
Presented by
Douglas Walker
April 15, 2015
Douglas Walker
The HadleySchool for the Blind presents iFocus: Tips on Using the Vision Accessibility Features in iOS. In today’s installment we’ll look at sending a text message.
Hello, my name is Douglas Walker, and I am an Instructor of Assistive Technology here at The Hadley School for the Blind. Today we are going to be looking at sending a text message, and we will be using the iPhone 6 Plus for today’s demonstration. You know it seems that everyone these days is texting.
Now if you aren’t quite sure what texting is all about, texting is usually used for sending a short text blurb or a short message, and these blurbs or messages going back and forth, is called a conversation. Now within this conversation, we’re also able to send media, such as a photo or even a short video. Now we’re able to send a text to anyone that has a cell phone plan that supports texting of course.
We can also iMessage a person using our iCloud email address, and now if we have an iPhone with a cellular plan we’re able to use our iPad and iPod Touch or even a Mac or MacBook Pro to send text messages to anyone right through our iPhone’s cellular connection which is pretty great. Okay, so let’s go ahead and get started texting then. All right, we’ll just flick to our messages app. So I’ll go ahead and flick to messages here.
[Messages: double tap to open] And then we’ll just single finger double tap to open our messages app here. So I’ll single finger double tap. [Messages: edit button] Okay, when we first launch messages we’re placed in either a list of message conversations like we are now, or we’re placed within our last open conversation.
Now if we’re placed within an open conversation we’re able to see all of the text blurbs that had been sent back and forth, and the most recent text is going to appear at the bottom of our conversation stream. Now we’ve been placed in our conversation list here. However if we had been placed within a conversation, all we would need to do is activate our back button in the top left corner of our screen and that would bring us right back to the list that we’re in now.
So let’s go ahead and just explore this messages list screen here to see how it looks and see how it works here. Okay, so we’re currently on an edit button that’s in the top left-hand corner of our screen. Now activating this edit button it gives us the ability to delete any of the conversations that are in this list here. However we’re going to look at a much faster way to be able to delete conversations in just a bit.
So, we’ll just start right flicking through the screen to totally explore it and so, we’ll just right flick from here. [Messages heading] All right, and here are we on our messaging heading, in the top center of our screen, just below our time and our status bar here. So we’ll just continue to right flick. So I will flick to the right.
[Compose button] Okay, and here’s our compose button, and it’s in the top right-hand corner of our screen. Now we’ll come back to this button when we actually begin composing our text message. So we’ll just continue to write flick from here. So I’ll just right flick.
[Search field: double tap to edit] Okay, and now we’ve been placed in a search field which is just below our heading here at the top of our screen, and this search field gives us the ability to totally search through all of our conversations on our list which can be really handy, especially if we have a lot of conversations on our list here.
Now when we right flick again we’ll be placed on the first conversation in our list. Now this first conversation is actually going to be the last conversation that we were having. So let’s go ahead and right flick to our conversations list here. So I’ll just right flick to it.
[Martha Weddington, Wednesday. You have a great day. Swipe up or down to select a custom action. Then double tap to activate.] Okay, we were just given some really great information here. We heard the person’s name that we were having the conversation with. We heard the day that this message was sent or that we were in this conversation, and we also heard a small piece of the last message that was sent which actually is the entire message because that was a short message there, and the last thing that voiceover announced was the ability to swipe up or to swipe down to select a custom action.
All right, so now we’ll see how this last item worked here in just a minute which it’s a really cool feature. All right, so if we continue to right flick through this vertical list, we’ll move to our next conversation in the list, and we’re going to hear the same type of information that we just heard. So let’s just right flick through a couple of these just to see how it looks, and so we’ll just right flick here. So I’ll flick to the right.
[Allison M. Conway, Tuesday. We’ll investigate. Swipe up or down to select a custom action. Then double tap to activate.] All right so we’ll flick to the right again just to hear the next one. [Margaret R. Tucker, 1/5/15. Call me if you need me. Love you all, too. We need to do the meatloaf one night soon.] All right. [Swipe up or down to select a custom action. Then double tap to activate.] All right, meatloaf sounds good to me.
All right, okay, now we keep hearing this swipe up or down to select a custom action here. If we remember, earlier we mentioned a really quick way to be able to delete a conversation. Well, this is it. So let’s just flick down and see how this works, and we’ll just flick down now. So I’ll flick down.
[Delete] All right, and we heard voiceover announce delete, and as you probably guessed, all we need to do to delete this conversation is perform a single finger double tap which is pretty great. Now if we decided that we don’t want to delete this conversation, all we need to do is flick down again and let’s do that to see what happens here. So I’ll flick down.
[Activate item. Default action.] Okay, and we heard voiceover announce activate item which of course is the default action here, and it would actually you know if we were to single finger double tap, this conversation would open and we could continue our conversation here. All right, so how great is that?
So okay, so let’s take a look at how to actually begin a brand new conversation. All right, remember we have a compose button that’s in the top right-hand corner of our screen here. Well, let’s just touch our compose button here and I’ll go ahead and do that.
[Compose button] And then we’ll just need to single finger double tap to activate it. So I’ll single finger double tap. [To text field is editing] All right, so we have now been placed in our “to field” to begin composing our new text message. However we’re going to totally explore this screen as well. You know at the same time that we explore through it, we’re going to be composing a text message. So we’ll do both things at the same time. We’ll explore and compose at the same time.
So let’s begin at the very top of our screen. Now just below the time in our status bar we have our new message heading here, and so let’s just touch our heading here to get started on the screen. [Three of three [inaudible 0:08:42] new message heading] Okay, now let’s just start right flicking through this screen and compose our new message at the same time. So we’ll just right flick from here.
[Cancel button] All right, so here we are on a cancel button in the top right corner of our screen, and we would just need to activate this button if we decided to cancel this text here. However we want to keep it. So we’ll just continue right flicking through this list. So let’s go ahead and right flick.
[To text field is editing.] Okay, and here we are back in our “to field”. Now this to field is where we’d actually type the cell phone number or the iCloud email address of the person in which we’re sending the message to. However today we’re going to be showing how to add our recipient from our contacts or address book here. So, if we right flick one more time, we’ll actually be placed on an “add contact” button, and so we’ll just right flick to get to it. So let’s go ahead and flick to the right.
[Add contact button] All right, now single finger double tapping on this button will actually open a list of all of our contacts. So let’s do that. Let’s just single finger double tap here. So I’ll single finger double tap.
[Add contact: all contacts groups button] All right, here we are in a list of all of our contacts. Now as sad as it sounds, I’ll actually be sending a text message to myself today. I know. It’s sad but that’s what we’re going to do today. Okay, so let’s just right flick through this page to see how to add this contact to our message. Now we’re currently on a refresh button in the top left corner of our screen. So as you’ve probably guessed, activating this button will simply refresh our screen. So we’ll just right flick to see what the rest of this screen looks like. So I’ll right flick here.
[All contacts heading] Okay, here we are on our all contacts heading, and of course that’s at the top center of our screen. Most headings are going to be right below our time in our status bar there. So we’ll just continue to right flick through this screen. So I’ll just right flick. [Cancel button] Okay, and here’s our cancel button you know, but we don’t want to cancel out of this contact list. So we’ll just continue to right flick through it here. So go ahead and right flick here.
[Search, search field: double tap to edit.] Okay. And here’s our search field and once again, it’s just below our heading, just like the last screen that we were on, and we could use this of course to search for the contact that we want to add which is really super handy. However, we’re just going to continue to explore our screen by just right flicking, and so we’ll just flick to the right again. So I’ll flick to the right.
[Table index adjustable. Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.] Okay, here we are on a table index, and if you’ve never used a table index before, it can be a really handy tool for helping us to quickly be able to move through a list. So let’s take a look at how this works. Now voiceover announced that we could swipe up or we could swipe down to adjust the value here, and if we just flick down with one finger, how about we do just that.
We’ll – we’re going to go ahead and swipe down to see what happens here. So I’ll swipe down. [B selected] All right, so we start moving through our alphabet. [C selected] We’re actually – C is the top of our list now. So I’ll flick down again. [D selected] Now D’s at the top of our list. So [E selected] all this can quickly move us through our list here. [F selected]
All right, and that’s really great but remember, we’re sending a text message to me, and my last name begins with a W for Walker. Well, to keep us from having to flick down over and over and over until we find our W’s, we could perform a single finger double tap and hold and while we’re holding on our second tap, we just drag our finger down our screen to quickly move forward through the alphabet, or we drag our finger up the screen to move backwards through the alphabet.
So let’s – how about we try this, and we’ll just single finger double tap and hold,[A selected] and we’ll just begin dragging our finger down to[U and Y, Z number selected] find our W,[Z, Y select, W selected] and there you go. That was so much – [T, S, R, Q] let’s go back up [selected] to see how this works. [P, O, N, L, K selected] I’m dragging my finger up the screen. I’ll drag it back down to the W’s here. [O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V select, W selected]
All right, so [U, V, W selected] here we are back on our letter W here. So if we just lift our finger. Now our contacts that begin with the letter W are at the top of our screen here. So that’s pretty handy. It takes some getting used to but it’s pretty handy. So let’s just touch near the top of our screen right below our search part here. [Capital W heading] All right and there you go. There’s our W.
Now we could just drag our finger down from here to move through our W’s if we like. However, we’ll just right flick from here. So I’ll right flick. [Douglas Walker, me] [chuckles] Me and there I am at the top of this list. Okay, so using the adjustable table index, it’s going to take some practice before we get totally comfortable with it. However it can really help to save us some time, you know especially if we happen to have a lot of contacts like I do in this list.
Okay, so here we are on Douglas Walker, and this is exactly where we want to be. Now if we were to activate this contact, all of my contact information would be visible, right? So for the sake of privacy, we aren’t going to do this. Well, I am going to do it but through the magic of video, I’ll be able to skip the step. So I’m going to go ahead and single finger double tap on this.
Okay, now we can pretend that – once we were in the contacts, we pretend that we’ve single finger double tapped on the contact, and then we just right flicked my contact information there and then all I did was single finger double tap to add the contact to our “to field” here. So once I opened the contact that was in the list earlier,I just single finger double tapped on my phone number and it added it right to this “to field” here and voila! Here we are. Okay, so that’s pretty cool. Now we love the magic of video to protect our privacy here.
So all right, so now our focus is in our “to field” here, and my name has been of course placed with it right from our contacts list here. All right, so let’s just right flick from here to see what we have. So I’ll just flick to the right. [Douglas Walker plus one] All right, and here we are on the contact that was added to our list. So we’ll flick to the right again. [Add contact button] Okay, and here we are on our “add contact” button again.
Now we could activate this if we wanted to so that we can make a group text. We could add another person to this text and we could – that would allow us to send it to more than one person at a time. However let’s just keep things simple today, and we’ll just right flick from here. All right, so we’ll go ahead and just right flick. [Attach media button. Double tap to select media. Double tap and hold to bring up fast options.] Okay, here we are on our add media button, and we heard that we could double tap to bring up some really nice media options here or we could double tap and hold to bring up fast options.
Now our fast options are honestly a bit glitchy when we’re using voiceovers. So you know it’s best just to stick to that single finger double tap for now, at least until Apple works out that bug. So let’s talk a little about how this will work. Single finger double tapping on this will bring up some options. Now these options are going to allow us to choose a photo or a video from our photo library.
We’ll also have the option to open up our camera and take a video right then for sending as a text message, or we could just cancel out of the options. You know it’s pretty great to have the ability to send someone a photo or a video. However again, we’re just going to keep things simple today and concentrate on just sending some texts.
All right, so let’s go ahead and right flick to get to our text area here. So we’ll go ahead and right flick. [message: iMessage text field. Double tap to edit.] Okay, and here we are on our text area now. Now we heard voiceover say double tap to edit. So we’ll just single finger double tap to enter into this text field here. So we’ll just single finger double tap and we heard that click. All right, so now at the bottom of our screen, we have a standard QWERTY keyboard for typing our text.
So how about we just type “how are you?” All right, and we’ll just type “how are you?” [Capital G, capital H, capital H-O-W space, How, A-R-E space, T, delete T, Y-O-U] Okay. And there you go. We now have text in our text area, and we’re ready to send it. However we do need to touch back in our text area to you know, just to check what we’ve written because I made a mistake. Corrected it but we made a mistake.
So we’ll just touch just above our keyboard here in our text area. [Message text field is editing. How are you?] Okay, there we are and we heard that our text is in our text area and that we’re ready to send it here. So if we right flick one more time, we’ll be placed on our send button. All right, so let’s just right flick from here, [send button: send using iMessage] and there’s our send button.