Keyboard & Accessibility¶
ScribeKit is a native macOS app, so most of its controls are ordinary AppKit controls that VoiceOver and full keyboard access already understand. This page covers the parts ScribeKit had to state for itself, and the places where it still falls short.
Menu commands¶
The application menus are the keyboard route to everything the menu bar item offers, and they read the same running meeting.
| Command | Menu | Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting screen | View | ⌘1 |
| History screen | View | ⌘2 |
| Search History | Edit | ⌘F |
| Pause Meeting | Meeting | ⌃⌘P |
| Resume Meeting | Meeting | ⌃⌘R |
| Stop Meeting | Meeting | — |
| Show Transcript in Finder | Meeting | — |
| Show Audio in Finder | Meeting | — |
| Quit ScribeKit | ScribeKit | ⌘Q |
Stop Meeting has no shortcut on purpose. It ends the meeting and finalises its files, and that is not an action to leave one mistyped keystroke away.
Every item disables itself when it cannot do anything: the Meeting items when no meeting is running or the meeting is in a state that cannot take them, and Search History when the History screen is not on screen. The items are derived from the same value the menu bar item is, so the window, the menu bar and the menus cannot disagree about what is currently possible.
Getting around without a mouse¶
- ⌘1 and ⌘2 move between the Meeting and History screens. The tab bar itself is a click target; the View menu is how the same move is made from the keyboard.
- ⌘F on the History screen puts the keyboard in the search field.
- The History list is a standard list: arrow keys move the selection, and the detail follows it.
- Return starts a meeting when the Start Meeting button is available, since it is the window's default button.
- Text fields, pop-up buttons, checkboxes and the notes editor behave as any macOS control does. Turn on Keyboard navigation in System Settings › Keyboard to reach buttons with Tab as well.
What VoiceOver is told¶
Most of ScribeKit is native controls that describe themselves. Three places are composed out of several pieces and would otherwise be read as unrelated fragments, so each is published as one item that states everything the screen shows:
- A readiness row reads as the prerequisite, its status in words and the detail — "Save location. Ready. …" or "Audio source. Action needed. …". The icon beside it carries no meaning of its own.
- A flagged review passage reads as its time, its priority, whether it has been marked reviewed, the recognised words, why it was flagged, and whether there is audio to play. Its Play Audio and Mark Reviewed buttons stay separate, because they are separate actions.
- A History row reads as the meeting's title, status, date and the matching excerpt together.
Nothing in ScribeKit signals a state with colour alone. Every status that has an icon has the same status in words beside it, and the app uses macOS's own semantic colours rather than a palette of its own, so it follows the system's light, dark and increased-contrast settings.
ScribeKit does not animate anything decorative, so there is nothing for Reduce Motion to turn off. The only movement on screen is the standard progress indicator macOS draws while discovery or a folder scan is running.
Text size and window size¶
The window opens at a comfortable size and can be resized down to about 620 points wide. Detail text wraps rather than truncating, the live transcript grows with its content up to a scrollable maximum, and long meeting titles, long folder paths and long error messages wrap inside the window rather than pushing controls out of reach.
Known gaps¶
- There is no Help content. The Help menu carries Export Diagnostics… and nothing else. ScribeKit has no network entitlement and does not open external links, so it does not link to this site from inside the app; the documentation is read here instead.
- VoiceOver has been driven by hand along a representative path, not through every flow. In Interval 25 a person turned VoiceOver on and worked through the readiness rows, source selection, Start, an active meeting, Pause, Resume, Stop, History rows, a session's status, playback and review controls, the notes editor and Save. The readiness rows read out their state, a session row carries its status and date, Pause was announced, and Start reads as dimmed while blocked and loses that once a source is chosen. Flows outside that path remain unheard, and ScribeKit claims no conformance to any accessibility standard. See Limitations.
- The tab bar is not itself in the Tab-key order. ⌘1 and ⌘2 are the keyboard route between screens.