Exploring the Multifunctional Jieshuo’s Shortcut Gestures

Last updated on 10 October 2024

Shortcut gestures, or the “Right shortcut” and “Left shortcut” functions, are two Jieshuo screen reader functions capable of performing various actions such as answering and ending calls, navigating lists, and activating with on-screen controls. Let’s explore how to use and customize these shortcuts.

Executing Shortcuts:

By default, the “Right shortcut” is activated by swiping either right or down, while the “Left shortcut” is activated by swiping left or up. The choice of swipes depends on the selected “gesture navigation style.” Using the “default” style means that both right and left swipes trigger the shortcuts, while the “Default2” style uses down and up swipes. If an “Alternative” navigation style is chosen, it’s essential to include “default” among the navigation types. Once “default” is selected as the navigation type, use the swipes that are for moving within the navigation type to perform the right and left shortcuts.
When using a “basic” style, there are no swipes reserved for the shortcuts, so you must assign gestures to activate them, and you can also access them from the main menu.

What Can Shortcuts Do?

The “right shortcut” and the “left shortcut” can be used in various scenarios for different actions. You can toggle these actions on and off by navigating to “Screen reader settings,” then “Operation settings,” followed by “Default gestures settings,” and finally selecting “Shortcut gestures settings.”

Navigating Lists Conveniently:

It’s not uncommon when swiping between items in apps to encounter buttons related to the main items, such as a button placed after each item to access options associated with that item. For example, the actions button found after each video on YouTube. Using shortcuts, you should be able to bypass these buttons and controls, moving only between the main items. To enable this navigation method, check the option: “Use shortcut gestures to quickly navigate in lists.” When this method of navigation works effectively, it saves time and improves app navigation, making it faster than the usual swipes that move between on-screen elements.

Answering and Ending Calls:

Another action that can be associated with shortcuts is answering and ending calls. To answer a phone call, you can use the “right shortcut,” and to reject it, you can use the “left shortcut.” To end an active call, simply use the left shortcut.
Although there are two checkboxes related to toggling answering and ending calls, the only one that controls these actions is “Enable universal call controls.” The other checkbox, labeled as “Use shortcut gestures to answer and end calls on the incoming call screen,” currently has no effect. It’s important to note that this observation is based on my own testing and may change with future versions.

Moving the Cursor in Text Boxes:

When you are focusing an edit box, you can use the right shortcut to move to the next character and the left shortcut to move to the previous character. To enable this feature, check “Use shortcut gestures to move the cursor in text boxes.”

Changing Slider Values:

Shortcut gestures can increase and decrease the values of sliders when they are in focus. The right shortcut increases the slider by 5%, while the left shortcut decreases it by the same amount. To activate this feature, check “Use shortcut gestures to adjust sliders.”

Scrolling Lists:

To scroll through lists using shortcuts, enable the option “Use shortcut gestures to scroll in lists.” This feature can be handy for navigating lists or moving between home screen pages.

Dealing with Dialog Boxes:

Dialog boxes, where you typically have options like “Cancel” or “OK,” “Start” or “Stop,” are encountered frequently. Usually, the “OK” button has the actual ID of “button1,” and the “Cancel” button is assigned the ID “button2.” With Jieshuo’s shortcuts, you can swiftly interact with these buttons when they appear on the screen. The right shortcut clicks button1, while the left shortcut is for button2. It’s important to note that for this feature to work, the actual IDs of the buttons should be as mentioned above , and that the label or name assigned to those buttons is not important. To activate this feature, enable “Use shortcut gestures to click the OK/Cancel button in dialog boxes.”

Activating Matching Onscreen Controls:

In addition to all the previous actions, shortcut gestures can be customized to activate onscreen controls based on user-customizable keywords.
The default keywords are determined by translators in the translation strings. To enable the ability to click onscreen elements via shortcuts, enable the option “Use shortcut gestures to activate matching onscreen controls.”

To view, add, delete, or modify keywords, tap on either “Left shortcut keywords” or “Right shortcut keywords.” From there, you can edit the existing keywords. Long-press any keyword to delete it. Press “Add” to include new keywords. You can use the vertical bar symbol between items to add multiple entries at once.
Use the asterisk symbol (*) to instruct the screen reader to ignore other text. Placing an asterisk before the specified text indicates that text before it in the control should be ignored, an asterisk after it indicates that text after it should be ignored, and enclosing text between two asterisks means that both text before and after it can be ignored, and the matching occurs based on this.
To revert to the default values, tap “Default.”

Customizing keywords is only available in the pro version. However, it’s still possible to modify them using custom translation by adjusting the “left_button_default_value” and “right_button_default_value” strings.

Notes:

1. As shortcuts are capable of performing various actions, unintended conflicts may occasionally occur, causing shortcuts not to behave as desired in specific situations. For this reason, it’s advisable to uncheck any options that you do not want to include among the shortcut actions.
2. Even if you uncheck the option related to answering and ending calls, you may still answer and hang up calls if you are using the matching keywords action and haven’t removed the matching keywords related to answering and ending calls.
3. For the answering and ending calls feature to work, the phone permission should be granted. Additionally, this feature may not function with VoIP apps like WhatsApp. In such cases, using the “matching keywords” option is recommended.