Creating a Calendar Event iOS 8
iFocus Program
Soft Skills: Creating a Calendar Event iOS 8
Presented by
Douglas Walker
April 18, 2015
Douglas Walker
The HadleySchool for the Blind presents iFocus: tips on using the vision accessibility features in iOS.
In today’s installment we’ll look at creating a calendar event.
Hello, my name is Douglas Walker and I am an instructor of assistive technology here at the HadleySchool for the Blind. Today we’re going to be looking at setting a calendar event. We’re using the iPhone 5s for today’s demonstration, and we’re running software version 7.1.2.
Alright. So, the calendar app is something that we really can use every day, and other than just checking the date, setting a calendar event is probably the biggest reason we’ll use it.
Now, we’ve had a lot of requests to cover today’s topic. So, let’s go ahead and jump right in. we’ll be able to set a calendar event right from our calendar app. So, we’ll just flick to it first to get started.
Now, it’s really great that the app icon shows the current date and that’s pretty cool. So we’ll just single finger double tap to activate it. Okay. So here we are in our calendar app. Now, the first thing that we’ll do is just explore our app, then we’ll get right into setting a new calendar event.
Okay. So, when we first open our calendar, it really depends upon where we last were in our app as to where we’ll be placed. Now, if we are in our year view, we’ll be placed in the ‘search’ button close to the top right corner of our screen.
However, if we were in our month view last time we were in our calendar, we’re typically placed on a ‘back’ button that’s on the top left corner of our screen. Since we heard ‘search’ announced when we opened our app we know that we’re in our year view.
Since we’re on our ‘search’ button we could just single finger double tap on the screen and we’d be presented with an edit field and we’d have a standard QWERTY keyboard at the bottom of the screen. We could use it for searching through all of our events that we’ve created. That’s really a handy feature.
However, we’re just going to begin by just flicking to the right to move to our current month in this list. So, we’ll just flick to our right to start exploring our screen here. I’ll go ahead and flick to the right. Alright, before we are placed in our list of months down here, we encounter our ‘add’ button here in the top right hand corner of our screen.
Now, this is the button that we’ll use to actually create a calendar event. So, we’ll come back to this add button after we finish exploring the rest of our app here.
Okay. So, when we being to flick to the right again we’ll be placed in a table view of our months for the year. This table consists of three columns and a series of rows here. Once we become more familiar with the layout of the screen we could just drag our finger around to find the month that we want.
However, we’re going to continue to right flick through our year here in order to navigate through this screen in a much more systematic way than just dragging around. Now, when we right flick we’ll be placed on a heading up here for our current year.
However, we’ll just continue to right flick until we find our current month. So, I’m going to flick to the right, I’m going to find that heading first. We heard the heading for our current year, so we’ll just continue to right flick through this year here.
So, I’m going to right flick to our current month. Alright. So, I’ll just keep right flicking here. Every time you hear that click you know that I’ve flicked to the right of the screen. I’ll flick to the right. Alright. We heard voice over announce the month’s name, and that it’s our current month.
We also got a hint to double tap to open this month. That’s pretty cool. Now we’ll just single finger double tap on this to open our month view. However, if we needed to move to another year – and not just 2014 – we could just perform a three finger flick up to move forward through our years, or we could three finger flick down to move backwards and choose and earlier year if we wanted to.
That’s really great, but we’ve already found the month that we want in this list. So, we’ll just perform a single finger double tap to open it then. We’ll do just that. So, I’ll just do a single finger double tap. Okay. So, now we’re in our month view here and have been placed on the back button in the top corner of our screen that tells us our current month.
Now, if we wanted to we could acti9vatet this back button to move back to our year view that we were just in. but this exactly where we want to be. So, we’re just going to begin by flicking to the right and just explore this screen.
So, I’ll just flick to the right. Okay. The list button is a great feature that’s been added to the calendar. If selected, this gives us a list view of all of our current calendar events for each day as we move through our calendar. Now, it’s not currently selected so we’ll just single finger double tap to go ahead and select it.
So, I’ll just single finger double tap. Now we have been given a list view, just below our monthly calendar view at the top of the page. That list view is at the very bottom of the page and pretty much covers the bottom third of the page down here.
Now, we’ll encounter this area as we progress through the top part of our screen. However, we’ll just continue to flick to the right for now to explore the screen, and eventually we’ll find that at the bottom of the screen here.
So, I’ll just flick to the right. Again, close to the top right corner – it’s not right in the top right corner – but close to the top right hand corner we find that same ‘search’ button that was in our year view. We can search through all of our events. So, we’ll right flick again. Here is our add button again in the top right hand corner of our screen. We’ll come back to this in just a minute.
Now, when we flick again we are going to be placed in our monthly calendar view and we’ll hear the day announced along with its date. So, let’s go ahead and flick to our month view. So, we’ll just flick to the right. There you go.
We can double tap to view the events if we need to. Alright. We’ve been placed right on the first day of our month and have been told, of course, that we can double tap to see this day’s events. However, we’re able to begin right flicking to systematically move through this month
Just keep in mind, it is our typical Sunday through Saturday view here. Typical work week here. So, if we wanted we could just drag our finger around on the screen to find another date. If we wanted to move to another month, we could use our three finger flick up to move forward through our months – just like the previous going through a different year on a previous page – or we could flick down with three fingers to move back in time.
We’re just going to right flick a few more times and finish exploring more of our calendar. Now, as we flick to the right we’ll be looking if we can see an already created calendar event here. It will announce that as we go. So, we’ll just right flick until we find a calendar event.
So, I’m going to flick to the right. No events there. Now, we’re going to get that ‘double tap to view events on this day’. We’re going to get these hints every time I pause like that. So, I might not pause every time. I’ll flick to the right. That’s our current day. We’ll get that double tap again.
I’ll flick it again to the right. Okay. We heard voice over announce that this date had two events. It’ the fourth of July. Since we activated our list view earlier, if we single finger double tap on this date to select it this date’s events will be listed in our list view which is right below our month view here in the bottom part of the screen.
So, how about we see how that works. We’ll just single finger double tap anywhere on the screen since that’s our focus. I’ll go ahead and do that single finger double tap. Now, we mentioned earlier that we have a list view right below our calendar here – our monthly calendar. We could continue to flick to the right through the rest of our calendar – of course, that’s a lot of flicking there – until we reach this list.
However, we’ll find it much faster if we just drag our finger down the screen here until we find that list view. So, let’s just go ahead and do that. We’ll just place our finger on our calendar and we’ll just drag down here. So, I’ll go ahead and do that.
I’ll just drag down the screen. Alright. There’s our first event in our view. Hadley Holiday tomorrow. Alright! A day off! Since we have more than one event, we know we have two events there, they’re in a list here now. We’re able to now right flick to move through them.
So, we’ll just right flick to see our other event that we have here. So, I’ll flick to the right. Alright. That is our next event. If we single finger double tap on any of these events in our list we can flick through a screen that gives this event’s details. We’ll have a screen opened up that gives the details for this event.
So, let’s take a look at how that looks. We’ll just left flick back to that first even here. So, I’ll go ahead and do that. I’ll left flick. Yeah, there’s that Hadley Holiday and we’ll just single finger double tap on this to open up the details. So, I’ll single finger double tap. Now, we won’t spend much time here, but we’ll just quickly right flick through this screen to see what we have.
So, we’ll just start flicking to the right. Flick to the right. There’s our event details heading right in the top of our screen where our headings usually our – right below the time up in the status bar there. So, we’ll just flick to the right again and that’s just a heading to tell us where we are. I’ll go ahead and flick to the right again.
Alright. So, here we have an ‘edit’ button in the top right hand corner of the screen. We could activate this and actually edit this event here, but we’re not going to do that. We’re just going to look at the rest of our details. So, we’ll just continue to right flick down the screen.
There we have all the details for our selected event here. So, these are some of the attributes here that we’ll see in just a minute when we learn how to create a new event. We have a couple more details here on this screen. S, we’ll just right flick again. I’ll just flick to the right.
Alright. So, here we find the calendar that this event is associated with. That’s pretty great. We’ll just flick one more time. Here we have our alert for this event. So, we’ll have an alert to tell us that event is coming up. Okay. So, we’re given some really great details about this event here.
So, we’ll just find our ‘back’ button in our top left corner of the screen and single finger double tap on it to activate it. So, I’ll find that ‘back’ button up here and we’ll just single finger double tap to go back to that previous screen. We’re now back in our month view here and we’ve been placed on the back button again in the top left corner of our screen there. Okay. So, there are three more buttons that we need to quickly explore before creating a new event.
We’ll find those just below this event’s list in the bottom of the screen and along the bottom edge of the screen. Now, they’re right along the bottom edge of our screen here. So, since we know they’re along the bottom edge, we can simply touch in the bottom left corner of our screen to find the first of them here. We’ll just touch in our bottom left corner. I’ll go ahead and do that.
Okay. There we find the ‘today’ button. This is probably a button that we’ll find ourselves using a lot. If we single finger double tap on this button we’ll be taken right to today’s date on our calendar. That is pretty cool. Really handy feature there. So, let’s see how this works. To do this we’ll just single finger double tap anywhere on the screen since we have the focus down there on the ‘today’ button.
I’ll single finger double tap. Now, how great is that, right? We’re taken right to today’s date in our calendar in this month view here. That is a great feature. Alright. So, let’s take a look at these last two buttons that we have. We’ll go back to our ‘today’ button. That’s in the bottom left corner of our screen.
I’ll go ahead and touch there again. Then we’ll just right flick to find these other two buttons down here at the bottom of the screen. I’ll flick to the right. Okay. In the bottom center of our screen we find a ‘calendars’ button. Now, we’re not going to get into this today, however, we’re able to setup different calendars to hold different types of events. Like birthdays, or a family calendar, or a work calendar.
If we single finger double tap here we’ll be given a list of these calendars. This might be a topic for a future video because it does get a bit detailed on how to set all these up. For now we’ll just right flick again to find that last button on our screen. So, I’ll flick to the right. Here in the bottom right hand corner we finally made it to the last button on this page.
Here we find our ‘inbox’ button. If we were to single finger double tap on our ‘inbox’ button we’d be given a list of all the calendar invites that we’ve received from other people through our email. There you’d be given the option to decline, or accept those in the list there. So, that’s a really handy option as well.
Okay. So, now that we’ve totally explored our calendar interface how about we go ahead and create a new calendar event? Alright. Remember we have an ‘add’ button up in the top right hand corner of our screen here. So, we’ll just touch in the top right hand corner to find that add button. I’ll go ahead and touch there.
So, now that we’ve activated it we’ll just single finger double tap to create a new event here. So, I’m going to go ahead and single finger double tap. Okay. So, now we’ve been placed in an ‘edit text’ field at the top of our screen here. We’ve been given a standard QWERTY keyboard at the bottom of our screen where we can begin naming this new event here.
Before we do that, let’s check out a couple buttons in the top of our screen that we need to know about here. So, we’ll just touch in the top left corner of our screen here. Alright. Here we find a ‘cancel’ button in the top left hand corner of our screen. If we decided we don’t need to create a new event, we just activate this with a single finger double tap there.
We’ll just flick to the right because we don’t want to cancel out of this. So, let’s just go ahead and flick to the right and explore the rest of the top of this screen here. I’ll flick. Alright. So, here’s our ‘add event’ heading again. It’s just below the time in our status bar there. If we keep right flicking – and I’ll do that – we have a ‘done’ button in the top right hand corner of our screen and we’ll come back to activate it when we have finished adding all of our attributes for our event.
If we flick one more time we’ll be back in our ‘edit field’ to created or name our new event here. So, let’s go ahead and right flick. So, now here is where we will begin naming our new event here. Alright. So, how about we name this something just like “YouTube video” since that’s what we’re making today?
So, we can just type the words “YouTube Video” here and we’ll do that. So, I’ll go ahead and just type “YouTube Video”. There’s YouTube. We’ll type ‘video’ now. Alright. There we have our new event’s title in the edit field. Now, to be able to continue moving through this list here, we’ll need to touch back in our ‘title edit’ field if we’re flicking, otherwise if we right flick from where we are we will just be flicking through our keyboard down here since that’s where our focus was.
So, we’ll just touch near the top of our screen, or we could just drag down to find our ‘title edit’ field there again. So, we’ll just touch up here somewhere. Alright, I got lucky and landed right on it. There we find our title’s text – YouTube Video. So, now since we’re in our title field we’ll just right flick to our next attribute in this list here.
So, I’ll flick to the right. Okay. So, we’re presented with another ‘text field’ here. Voice over just announced to double tap to edit. So, we’re not within that edit field. So, we’ll just single finger double tap to enter into this text field here. So, I’ll go ahead and single finger double tap. Alright. So, this edit field gives us the opportunity to add a location for our event.