Accessibility Tips and Tricks

Visual Studio includes built-in accessibility features so you can easily work from the keyboard and use screen readers or other assistive technology devices. The topic includes some suggestions for optimizing Visual Studio for accessibility as well as some useful shortcut key combinations.

Note

The dialog boxes and menu commands you see might differ from those described in Help depending on your active settings or edition. To change your settings, choose Import and Export Settings on the Tools menu. For more information, see Working with Settings.

Tips for Making Visual Studio More Accessible

• **Customize the IDE   **You to can save your window layout, keyboard mapping scheme, and other preferences for use on your current machine and on other machines. For more information, see How to: Share Settings Between Computers or Visual Studio Versions and Working with Settings.

• Apply accessibility settings   Visual Studio includes a sample macro that can be applied to the product to make the integrated development environment (IDE) more accessible. This macro includes optimizations for working with screen readers. For more information, see Macros Samples.

Common Windows Shortcut Key Combinations

You can use many of the standard Windows shortcut key combinations to perform tasks within Visual Studio. Some of these shortcut key combinations include:

Description	Key Combination
Switch High Contrast on and off	Left ALT + Left SHIFT + PRINT SCREEN
Select or clear the check box option in a dialog box	SPACEBAR
Display the properties of the selected item. For example, puts focus in the Properties Window if a form is selected or Opens the Property Page dialog box if a project is selected.	ALT+ENTER
Display the items in the active list, such as a drop-down list, in a dialog box	ALT + DOWN ARROW
Display items in an active drop-down list in a grid	SHIFT + ALT + DOWN ARROW

Hidden Visual Studio Shortcut Key Combinations

Some features have shortcut keys available that do not appear in the Options dialog box on the Environment\Keyboard pane. These shortcut key combinations include the following:

Feature	Description	Key Combination
Toolbox window	Move among Toolbox tabs	CTRL + UP ARROW and CTRL + DOWN ARROW
Toolbox window	Add a control from the Toolbox to a form or designer	ENTER
Keyboard, Environment, Options dialog box	Delete a key combination entered in the Press shortcut keys option	BACKSPACE
All tool windows	Select the first button on the toolbar of the window	SHIFT + ALT
IDE toolbars	Select the first button on the Standard toolbar	ALT, CTRL + TAB Note Press CTRL + TAB again to select the first button on the next IDE toolbar.

See Also

Other Resources

Accessibility Features of Visual Studio