So far we have gone through adding information to our documents as well as doing some basic editing and formatting on them. You are almost done but hold on, it is advisable that you run a spell check on your document before distributing it to others as a finished product. The powerful Microsoft Word application will not only check for spelling errors for you but it will also search and highlight any grammatical mistakes it finds.
As you type, Word keeps tabs on your spelling. When you hit the Spacebar after typing an incorrectly spelt word, the program immediately puts a red line underneath that word indicating that the spelling you typed is not in line with what it has in its dictionary. While that red line might be discernable to sighted persons, it is lost on blind and visually impaired persons so NVDA makes a sound after pressing the Spacebar to inform its users of the same thing. How do you fix the spelling error though? Well of course you could manually go and correct the word. But what if you don’t want to? What if you are not quite sure how to spell the word? Don’t worry, Microsoft Word has your back.
Quick Spelling Corrections
A very quick way of correcting your spelling errors is to use the context menu. Just navigate to the word which is spelt incorrectly and press the Applications key or Shift + F10. In the context menu that appears, Word will give some possible suggestions of corrections to the word you typed at the top of the list. You can use your Up or Down arrow keys to go through the suggestions. Then just press Enter on the option you wish to use.
Want to know how the suggestions are spelt? Sometimes this becomes very necessary as you know that there are words that sound the same but are spelt differently. Also, “its” and “it’s” sound the same so how would you know which one your screen reader is reading to you? You will not be able to use the Left or Right arrows to go through these words character by character to know how they are spelt. What you could use is the review cursor in NVDA to help you with this. While in desktop layout with the screen reader NVDA and with your Num Lock off, pressing Num Pad 5 once will say the current word, pressing it twice quickly will spell the current word and pressing it three times quickly will spell the current word phonetically. If more than one word make up the suggestion in the context menu list, use NumPad 6 to go to the next word and Num Pad 4 to go backwards. Adding the JAWS key [which is typically Insert in desktop layout or Caps Lock in laptop layout] to the aforementioned Num Pad keys while using the JAWS screen reader will yield similar results.
Spell Check Dialogue Box or Proofing Pane
Pressing the F7 key anywhere in your document will cause the Spell Checker to open. In many versions of Word, this is a dialogue box. When this opens, your screen reader will proceed to announce the first spelling or grammatical error that Word highlights. You can then choose from a series of actions to take and you get to these varying options by using the Tab key. The options are:
- Ignore – if you press Enter on this option, the spell checker will let alone what if found to be an error and move on through the document. This might become necessary to use as not all words you may want to use may be found in Word’s dictionary or maybe you see nothing wrong with your sentence grammatically. The keystroke Alt + I or just “I” in later versions while in the spell checker will also activate this option.
- Ignore all – this button tells the spell checker to ignore all occurrences of words with the same spelling.
- Suggestion list – this area presents a list of suggested corrections to your word or sentence. You can Up or Down arrow through the list and select the one you want by pressing Enter.
- Change – activating this button will cause the spell checker to use the first option in the suggestion list to fix your word or sentence. The keystroke Alt + C or just “C” in later versions while in the spell checker will also activate this option.
There are other buttons but those are the most commonly used ones. Pressing Enter on either of those options will activate the actions described and cause the spell checker to move on to the next error.If there are no other errors, Word will display a message informing you that the spell checker is complete. Just hit Enter on the Ok button and you are good to go. Now your document is error free!
Variation in Word 2013 and 2016
It must also be mentioned that there is a slight variation to this in Word 2013 and 2016. Read this quote from the NVDA website:
“In Office 2013, and continuing in Office 2016, spell check moved from a dialog box to a task pane. One feature which didn’t come across to the task pane was the edit box with the preview of text on either side of the error. The idea likely was that since the task pane pops in from the side, the view of the document itself jumped to the error and sighted users could read that”.
In-Process 11th September 2018
So the spell checker might give you a little trouble in Word 2013 and 2016. Upon pressing F7, the screen reader will not read the error to you as the edit field is not there. Here is a little trick to use with NVDA to get over this problem:
- While on the “Ignore” button in the spell checker, press Insert + Num Pad 4 [with Num Lock off]. NVDA will then announce the error.
- You can use the review cursor of NVDA to go through and spell the words being highlighted as having errors. Num pad 5 pressed once will cause NVDA to say the word, pressed twice will cause NVDA to spell the word and pressed three times will cause NVDA to spell the word phonetically.
- Tab through as usual to activate the buttons described above.
- When you need to hear the next error, head once again to the “ignore” button and press Insert + Num Pad 4.
That is it. Happy spell checking!
Take Away Keystrokes
| Keystroke | Function |
| Applications key or Shift + F10 | Opens context menu with suggested corrections |
| F7 | Opens Spell Check dialogue box |
| Tab | Navigates through buttons in dialogue box |
| Alt + I | Activates “Ignore” option while in spell checker |
| Alt + C | Activates “Change” option while in spell checker |
| Num Pad 5 | Reads current word |
| Num Pad 5 twice quickly | Spells current word |
| Num Pad 5 three times quickly | Spells current word phonetically |
| Num Pad 6 | Reads next word |
| Num Pad 4 | Reads previous word |
