Tips for navigating YouTube with a screen reader
YouTube controls and keyboard shortcuts
The YouTube web player has a series of controls for various playback options, such as Play/Pause, jump to previous or next chapter in the video, change playback speed, turn captions on or off, etc. These controls can be activated using keyboard shortcuts. However, if you are using a screen reader, these shortcuts will, by default, perform commands related to your screen reader. So, to ensure that the keyboard shortcut activates a YouTube command rather than a screen reader command, you have to set the screen reader to ignore screen reader shortcuts. There are a few ways to accomplish this. Below you will find two possible options. For more information, consult your screen reader documentation.
- To turn most shortcuts off and back on, press JAWS key +Z for JAWS, or NVDA key +Shift +Space. Use the same shortcut to turn them back on.
- Alternatively, you can have the screen reader ignore only your next key press. Press JAWS key +3 for JAWS, or NVDA key +F2.
For a complete list of available YouTube shortcuts, open the player, make sure that the screen reader is ignoring the next key, and press ? (question mark).
About chapter navigation
Some recordings may be divided by chapters, allowing you to quickly access a specific section of the webinar. Locate the description of the video and select “more…” to see a list of available chapters.
They are at heading level four. Press 4 or Shift+4 to jump to the desired chapter and then press Enter to play it.
Alternatively, make sure the screen reader is ignoring the next key, and use Ctrl+Right Arrow or Ctrl+Left Arrow to jump to the next or previous chapter respectively.