LAURA PALMARO: Hi, I’m Laura and I’m on the Chrome accessibility
team at Google.
In this quick video, I’m going to show you some different ways to navigate Chrome on
your Mac using just your keyboard.
We’ll cover setting up full keyboard access, common browsing techniques, and where you
can get more information.
First I’m going to start off with something that’s specifically for the Mac.
It’s called “Full Keyboard Access.”
And by default, your Mac keyboard is set to navigate only to text boxes and lists on screen.
But, when you make a quick change in settings, you can access all controls on the screen.
So I’ll navigate to system preferences.
There are a handful of ways to do this, but I’ll go ahead and press Command and the
Spacebar to open up Apple’s Spotlight Search, then type System Preferences and press Enter.
From here, I can type Keyboard in the search box, arrow down to keyboard shortcuts and
press enter.
Towards the bottom of the screen under the full keyboard access section, simply make
sure that the option for “all controls” is selected.
And we’re set!
Now let’s talk about browsing.
You may already know that you can browse a page a few different ways:
...using the Up and Down arrow keys…
...holding down the Function key and pressing the up or down arrows to jump through larger
sections of the page…
…holding down the Function key and pressing the Left or Right arrows to jump to the top
or bottom of the page...
...or, if you’re on a Mac desktop computer with a full keyboard, you can use the Home
and End keys to do the same thing.
But did you know you can also scroll down whole sections of a page just by pressing
the Spacebar?
When you reach the end of the page, simply press Shift with the Spacebar to scroll back
up.
To move around the page, jumping from one clickable thing to another, press Tab.
And to jump backwards?
Shift + tab.
Now I’m going to stay on this tab but go to another web page.
I’ll press Command L, as in location, to place my cursor in the omnibox, type a URL,
and press enter.
If I want to go back to the previous page, I just hold down the Command key and press
the Left arrow.
To go forward again, you probably guessed -- I can press Command and the Right arrow
key.
I can also do this same thing another way.
I can press Command and the Left bracket to go back to the previous page.
The left bracket key is next to the letter P on your keyboard.
And to go forward again?
If you guessed Command + Right bracket, you got it!
If I want to refresh the page at any time, I can press Command + R as in Refresh.
And to get to the Home page at any time (which I personally have set to Google.com), I press
Command + Shift + H as in home.
Next, If I hold down Command and Shift, and then press the Question Mark, it opens the
Help menu, and my cursor is automatically placed in the help search box.
With the Help menu open, I can now type a search term, press the Down arrow then enter
to report an issue to Google,
Or I can press Down again and then Enter to open Google Chrome’s Help Center in a new
tab.
Remember: Command + Shift + Question-Mark opens that menu.
Finally, I’m going to close the whole browser now by pressing Command + Q, as in Quit.
So now we’ve seen some helpful ways to browse by keyboard, and where to find additional
help.
To provide our team with feedback or ask question about anything I’ve covered today, join
our Google Group and drop us an email at chrome-accessibility@googlegroups.com.
To learn more about Google accessibility, check out at Google.com/accessibility.
To sign up for user studies to explore new features and to help shape Google products,
go to Google.com/usability.
Also, look out for other videos about different ways to make Chrome work better for you.
Again, I’m Laura, and on behalf of myself and the Chrome Accessibility Team, thanks for watching!