Visually impaired and could do with keyboard method to move focus to selection after completing Find in Page
I often use Find in Page in Firefox on Windows 10. If the text is found in a link I can tab back and to between that link and the next one to be able to restart my screen reader from where the search text has been found. However if Find in Page finds the search text in normal text (ie not a link) I am not able to change the focus to the selection with the arrow keys (which seemed the logical way to do it) so when I start up my screen reader again it is still elsewhere on the page.
So basically my question is Is there a keyboard combination that will move the focus/current position on the page to the text highlighted after a Find in Page. I cannot find one in the various lists i have come across whilst searching the web.
Any help or advice appreciated, as a solution would greatly increase the speed with which I can assess a page and move on to the next one if it is not of use
All Replies (5)
Hi ittiwuk, maybe this is what you need:
When you use Find in Page (Ctrl+f), the "focus" remains in the Find bar even though Firefox is creating a selection in the page. To close the find bar and make the selection in the page active, try pressing the Esc key.
Does that work with your screen reader?
Thanks for that. That is the approach I was adopting but it is not working how I had hoped. It could of course be the screen reader is causing the problem, if anyone could confirm that pressing the arrow key to try and move the cursor from the selection after using and escaping from Find in Page moves it to the appropriate position relative the highlighted item, rather than simply moving the cursor from its previous position on the page, it could confirm it is an issue with using a screen reader rather than just a feature of firefox.
Regards Ian
Hi Ian, using Find, then closing the Find bar with Esc, and then pressing the right arrow key won't do anything as far as I can tell. Unless I turn on "caret browsing", the mode where arrow keys move the vertical bar through the page. The F7 key usually activates and disables this mode. Have you been using that and it maybe got turned off?
Thanks jscher2000
I should have sstated that this abilirty to switch teh focus to the selection that results from a Find in Page is not something I was able to do in the past. I was just hoping someone out there had knowledfge of how I could it. I did not know of the F7 but having tried it it makes no difference. However thanks your response I now know that it is jiust something that Firefox is probably not capable of and that I probably have to continue reading all the web page or copying its contents away to a word processor to jump through the text and recreate a screen reader version of the document skimming I did before I lost most of my sight. . Thanks again for your help. Ian
Hi Ian, the F7 button doesn't so anything while the Find bar is opened. You would need to press it either before opening it or after closing it. But whenever, you turn it on, when you press the right arrow, the insertion bar should flash just past the selected Find result. Maybe that's not what you're looking for.
What software is it? Maybe if I understood what it needs you to do to indicate where you want to start, it would be easier to make suggestions.