VoiceOver Breaks Badly with Cursor Navigation in TextEdit's Vertical Layout

Originator:listsebby
Number:rdar://20070149 Date Originated:06-Mar-2015 03:20 PM
Status:Closed Resolved:Intended Behaviour
Product:Accessibility Product Version:OS X
Classification:Serious Reproducible:Always
 
Summary:
When TextEdit is in the vertical layout (Format > Make Layout Vertical), VoiceOver is impossible to use for navigating or selecting text. For all practical purposes, this makes TextEdit unusable.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Turn on Voiceover and launch TextEdit.

2.  In the menus, choose Format > Make Layout Vertical.

3.  Type some number of lines--five of them should do.

4.  Try to use the cursor keys to read each line (up and down) or each character (left and right) or each word (option-left and option-right).

5.  Try selecting words, characters, or entire lines (with the addition of the shift key).

Expected Results:
Of course, the usual rules should apply: up/down move by line, left/right by character, option-left/right by word, and shift is held to select the respective amount of text.

Actual Results:
All sorts of nonsense. Shift-left/right seems to select lines, or parts of lines. Left and right seems to move the cursor to the first word of adjacent lines. Up and down skips lines. And using the option keys either doesn't work at all or just moves to the closest word. It's just broken, really.

Notes:
Problem introduced in Yosemite, and is apparently only specific to TextEdit; every other entry field is fine.

AppleVis is discussing this issue here:
http://www.applevis.com/bugs/osx/vertical-layout-text-edit-causes-voiceover-not-read-document

Comments

Engineering's Response:

There appears to be some confusion over vertical text. In vertical text up/down moves between character and left/right move between lines.

By listsebby at March 10, 2015, 6:09 p.m. (reply...)

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