[nabs-l] Google calendar

Wed Feb 11 00:47:50 UTC 2015

Hi Bre,

I have not used Google Calendar with VoiceOver on a Mac. It does not
work well with JAWS or NVDA. I just looked for information on how to
share a calendar accessibly with the web view and Google's
accessibility page says they are working on it, so that's a sign...

Anyway, I have achieved some success. I recommend you use the calendar
on your iPhone most of the time to manage events and just share your
calendar on the web view through the hack I will talk about.

To use a Google calendar on your iPhone, first sync the corresponding
mail account with your iPhone and make sure calendars are turned on to
sync. Your calendar will automatically sync with your phone, but if
anyone shares their calendar with you, and if you want to have access
to it, click this link in Safari on your iPhone, sign in to the email
account, and check the box of your colleague's calendar(s) that you
want to sync with your phone. Note: free/busy calendars do not sync.
So tell your colleagues and they will either get over it or not share
their calendar with you. But even with agenda view, the most
accessible web view of calendar, I have not figured out how to
efficiently differentiate which event corresponds with which calendars
and I have about 50 million shared with me, so if anyone has
suggestions on that, that would be very helpful.

Anyway, bookmark this link on your phone so you can always have it
available should you need to sync or unsync calendars from your
iPhone's calendar app.

https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect

The iOS calendar app has a calendars button near the bottom of the
screen. Tap this button to bring up a list of all of your synced
calendars. After you have synced all of your calendars to your iPhone,
you will be able to double tap each calendar that you want to show up
in the calendars app at a particular time. You will notice that if you
have calendars from other email accounts such as your school or
personal account syncing to iPhone, they will all be here. I find that
if I want to view one or two calendars, I press the "show all
calendars button" which then turns into the "hide all calendars"
button. I press this which erases all calendars. I then swipe through
and select the one or two that I want to see. This prevents me from
having to remember which calendars are currently showing and which
calendars I want to be showing. Press the "done" button and voila, you
should be able to see the calendars you want to view at that
particular time.

It is very easy to add an event using the calendars app.

Currently, you cannot invite other people to events on your Google
calendars via the iPhone app.to; You can just invite people if you
indicate the calendar as your iCloud one and if you invite other
iCloud email addresses. I have not used this feature except for
Washington Seminar. I find that confirming event times via email and
trusting others to create events in their own calendars has worked for
me just fine.

You also cannot share a calendar on the iPhone calendar app. To share
a calendar, I recommend that you ask the person to request access to
your calendar. You might want to ask a non screen reader user to do
this for you unless someone has tips on how to accessibly request
access to someone's Google calendar. This will generate an email to
you with a link that you can click. This link will take you to a page.
Find the edit box; it will have the requester's email address inside.
Simply press save and the person will then have access to your
calendar. I have noticed that if I am clicking the link through Safari
on my iPhone, I sometimes have to press "save" twice. If you are using
your organization's email on top of the Gmail interface, you might get
an alert message asking if you are sure you would like to share your
calendar with someone outside your organization. This is the case if I
share my school email address with a generic Gmail user. Just press
ok, easy to do, and the settings will update. Save this link however,
because you can use it to share your calendar with others. To add
another email address to share your calendar with, find the edit box
with the original requester's email address. Place a comma after the
email address, and type the email address of anyone you want to share
your calendar with. That is my hack. You may have to check a box that
says something like "give access to certain people" or something like
that before the edit box with the original requester's email address
becomes accessible to edit with another person's email address. But
this is traversable with JAWS.

I'd send you one that I have gotten, but the links have the user's
username as a part of the URL, and I don't want anyone to indirectly
share their calendar with this person as I believe if you click the
link it will default to include the original requester's email address
in the edit box.

Finally, remember that each time someone shares a new calendar with
you, you will need to click that link to sync it with iPhone. So
bookmark it in Safari!

Google is supposed to be coming out with a Calendar app soon, so
here's to hoping for it to be accessible and to include all of the
features available on the web!

Cindy

On 2/10/15, Bre Brown via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Does anyone use google calendar?
> If so, does it work with jaws or voice over?
> How do I get it started?
>
> Thanks
> Bre Brown
>
> Secretary, National Association of Blind Students
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
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-- 
Cindy Bennett
1st Year Ph.D. Student, University of Washington
Human Centered Design and Engineering

Treasurer of the National Federation of the Blind of Washington
an Affiliate of the National Federation of the Blind

clb5590 at gmail.com