Rotor Navigation for links, tables, and headings in Microsoft Word for Mac

(Originally posted October 15, 2019 By ~ Ali Forelli)

Hi, my name is Ali Forelli and I am a program manager responsible for accessibility features in Microsoft Word.

In Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave), Apple added improved Rotor Navigation for VoiceOver. We’re excited to announce that starting with Office 16.29, Microsoft Word now supports Rotor Navigation for links, tables, and headings within your documents!

Moving rotor navigation

What is a rotor?

Navigation Rotor is a macOS VoiceOver feature that supports contextual navigation of various content types for visually impaired users. It can be accessed via keyboard or gestures. This post explains keyboard navigation using Rotor in Word. For more information about gestures, see Apple’s help documentation. https://www.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/_1137.html#vo28035

Rotor navigation menu in 3 different positions

How it works

To turn on VoiceOver, press Command-F5. With VoiceOver enabled, you can access Rotor Navigation by pressing Command-Caps Lock-Left or Right Arrow to navigate between Rotor options.

You can select a link, table, or heading from the rotor within Word. After you have selected an item, use Caps Lock-Up or Down Arrow to move between items of that type in your document. For example, to move to a table, press: Command-Caps Lock-Right Press the arrow key until the selection displays as “Table”, then release and hold the key. Caps lock down Moves the cursor to the next table in the document.

Navigate between titles using the Rotor

Content List

You can also click Next to generate a list of each content type in your document. Control-Option-U. This command displays a list of the current Rotor selections. If you navigate by link, you can press Control-Option-U to display the list of links, use the up or down arrow keys to navigate the list, and press Enter to close the list menu and jump to that cursor location in the document.

You can also type while a list of links, headings, or tables is open, and typing text automatically searches the list for the text you type. In the example below, if you were looking for the “Quality” link, you could use the Rotor selection to navigate to the link, then press Control-Option-U to open the list of links. Once the list of links is generated, you can use the down arrow to navigate to item 7, or type “Quality” to generate a search list of links that contain the word “Quality.”

List of contents generated using Control-Option-U in Word

How did navigation work before?

Before Rotor Navigation, you could navigate between links or tables in Word by pressing Control-Option-Command-L and T. You could navigate headings in Safari, but not in Word. Now, with Rotor support, you can navigate between these three content types much more efficiently, and we expose a list of each content type for easy searching and navigation.

feedback

I’d like to hear from you! Go to: help > feedback To submit feedback on this feature, please contact Word.

Sign up Microsoft 365 Insider Newsletter And get the latest Insider features straight to your inbox once a month!