Using a keyboard to complete practices, quizzes, and diagnostics

Standard keyboard shortcuts

If you're looking for keyboard shortcuts for questions where you highlight words, please see "Keyboard shortcuts for highlighting."

Note that for some screen readers, you may need to turn off the virtual cursor or adjust other settings to use keyboard shortcuts within a web page. NVDA and JAWS often require entering "focus mode" with Insert + Space before you can use keyboard shortcuts.

Press this key	Action	Tips
Tab	Select the next interactive item or next group of interactive items Note that selection behavior is slightly different when highlighting words. Please see "Keyboard shortcuts for highlighting" for complete instructions.	This is like hovering over an item with a mouse before clicking on the item.
Hold Shift and press Tab	Select the previous interactive item or previous group of interactive items	This is like hovering over an item with a mouse before clicking on the item.
Space or Enter	Activate the selected item to take an action or cycle through its options Add or remove the selected item to or from different areas on the screen	This is like clicking or tapping on the selected item. This can be used on words in a sentence, punctuation marks, the submit button on a question, and more.
Up or Down arrow keys NVDA or JAWS screen reader: Hold Alt and press Up or Down arrow keys	Add or remove the selected item to or from different areas on the screen	This is like dragging and dropping with a mouse or touch screen.
Left or Right arrow keys NVDA or JAWS screen reader: Hold Alt and press Left or Right arrow keys	Move the selected item to another place in the sentence	This is like dragging and dropping with a mouse or touch screen.

Keyboard shortcuts for highlighting

Note that for some screen readers, you may need to turn off the virtual cursor or adjust other settings to use keyboard shortcuts within a web page. NVDA and JAWS often require entering "focus mode" with Insert + Space before you can use keyboard shortcuts.

Press this key	Action	Tips
Tab	Move into the area where you can highlight words Move into the highlighter toolbar, where you can select different highlighter types/colors	You only need to press tab once to enter the area where you can highlight words or select a highlighter type/color.
Left or Right arrow keys NVDA or JAWS screen reader: Hold Alt and press Left or Right arrow keys	Select the next or previous word or group of words Select the next or previous highlighter type/color	This is like hovering over an item with a mouse before clicking on the item.
Space	Highlight or unhighlight the selected word or group of words	This is like clicking or tapping on the selected item.
Hold Shift and press Left or Right arrow keys NVDA or JAWS screen reader: Hold Shift + Alt and press Left or Right arrow keys	Highlight more than one word at once	This is like clicking and dragging with a mouse or touch screen.

Example highlighter questions

Video example of keyboard shortcuts

Show video transcript

Screen recording of a NoRedInk practice exercise on the topic "Creating Clauses with Colons and Semicolons"

In this exercise, students can drag a comma, colon, or semicolon into a sentence. A menu of these punctuation marks is shown above the sentence.

The sentence shown on screen is: "Harry Potter forgot to bring his towel to the beach: he can use his oversized sweatshirt to keep warm, however."

Keypresses are shown on screen when the user takes an action:

• The user presses the tab key. The first punctuation mark in the menu, a comma, is outlined with a blue focus ring.
• The user presses the down arrow key. The comma moves into the first available area in the sentence, between "Harry" and "Potter."
• The user presses the right arrow key. The comma moves right one place, just after "Potter." The user presses the right arrow key again. The comma moves right another place, just after "forgot."
• The user presses the down arrow key. The comma is removed from the sentence and the blue focus ring moves to the word "forgot."
• The user presses tab repeatedly as each word in the sentence is focused. When the focus is on the colon after the word "beach," the user stops pressing tab.
• With the colon focused, the user presses the space key. The colon changes to a semicolon. The user presses the space key again. The semicolon changes to a comma.
• The user presses the enter key. The comma changes to a colon. The user presses the enter key again. The colon changes to a semicolon.
• With the semicolon after the word "beach" focused, the user presses the right arrow key.
• The semicolon moves after the word "he." The user presses the left arrow key. The semicolon moves back after the word "beach."
• The user holds the shift key and presses tab as focus moves backwards through the sentence and back into the menu of punctuation marks. The last punctuation mark in the menu, a semicolon, is outlined with a blue focus ring.
• The user holds the shift key and presses tab again. The colon is now focused. The user presses the down arrow key and the colon moves into the first available area in the sentence, between "Harry" and "Potter."
• The user presses the up arrow key and the colon is removed from the sentence.
• The user presses the tab key until the "Submit answer" button is focused. The user presses the enter key. A screen is displayed showing "Level 1 Complete" with one of four stars filled in.

Why use keyboard shortcuts?

By ensuring that our exercises are fully keyboard accessible, we allow as many students as possible to benefit from NoRedInk's resources while preserving and encouraging student independence:

• Many students need assistive technology such as a keyboard, screen reader, switch, mouth stick, or other device to use websites.
• Some students struggle with trackpads or may have broken mice or cracked touch screens that prevent them from using non-keyboard input devices.
• Some students may work better and in a less distracted way by keeping their hands on their keyboard rather than switching to a mouse between questions.

To this end, our keyboard shortcuts follow standard patterns that students and general users may be accustomed to using on other websites or with other software. Many assistive technology devices use these standard keyboard shortcuts behind the scenes, so our keyboard shortcuts should provide wide device support.

Our goal is to make non-mouse and non-touch use as user-friendly as possible. Please feel free to send us feedback on how these shortcuts are working for you or how they could be improved!