As of Surge XT 1.0, both the plugin - as well as standalone version - include accessibility for screen readers and other assistive technologies on Windows and Mac OS. On this page you’ll find information on how to configure Surge to work best with a screen reader, as well as some tips on how to navigate around the interface faster.
The Workflow sub-menu in Surge XT includes a few of options that should be turned on for the best accessibility experience. To adjust these, after you have opened Surge XT in your DAW (or the standalone), find and press the “Main Menu” button and open the “Workflow” sub-menu. Once you’re there, check the following options, if they’re not already turned on:
Depending on the DAW, some of Surge XT’s keyboard shortcuts may not get through to the plugin. If this happens, refer to your DAW’s documentation for a way to pass all keyboard input through to the plugin. For example, in case of REAPER, you will find this option in the “preset menu” button found in the FX dialog. Alternatively, you can change any of Surge XT’s keyboard shortcuts by selecting “Edit keyboard shortcuts…” From the Workflow menu (or pressing Alt+B if you have already enabled keyboard shortcuts).
You can navigate Surge XT’s interface using the keys you normally would in any other program. On Windows with Tab/Shift+Tab and the arrow keys, on Mac with VoiceOver commands. Every control also offers a right-click menu with additional options, which can be accessed with Shift+F10 or VO+Shift+M on Mac.
In addition, you can use Alt+Period/Comma (Windows) or Option+Period/Comma (Mac) to quickly jump the focus between major interface sections.
Other useful navigation commands worth remembering include:
When a slider has focus, the following keys can be used:
In addition to pressing the Patch Browser to get a menu of all patches or using the previous/next controls, a number of keyboard shortcuts are available to make navigating patches easier.
If you find that the cursor gets stuck in a submenu, either disable cursor tracking by hitting VO+Shift+F3 while you’re in the menu, or set the mouse cursor to ignore VoiceOver in the navigation section of VoiceOver utility.
Sliders can be adjusted using the conventional VoiceOver approach of interacting, but you will find that using Surge XT’s native keystrokes to move the sliders provide more granular control. See Manipulating sliders section above for more details.
In addition to its standard navigation and interaction keystrokes, VoiceOver’s deeper features can boost productivity when navigating complex applications like Surge XT. A few that you will likely find helpful are VoiceOver Find (VO+F), Item Chooser (VO+I) and Hotspots. Consult VoiceOver documentation for more information.
There are currently two things to be aware of when using Surge XT on Windows.
Generally speaking, Surge can be navigated using Tab and Shift+Tab to move focus through controls, arrow keys to adjust the control that has focus, and Shift+F10 to open context menus normally accessible with a right-click. Since Surge XT is a very complex application with many controls, you will also find the Alt+Period/Comma shortcuts to jump between the major sections very helpful.
If you wish to explore the screen in more detail without moving the system focus, all widely adopted Windows screen readers offer some way of exploring the screen using a hierarchical approach (much like how VoiceOver works on macOS) and you can use these deeper navigation features to jump from group to group in Surge. We’ve put together some hints for hierarchical navigation with the three most common Windows screen readers below. For full details of these features, please refer to their respective documentation.
NVDA’s review feature is called the Object Navigator. It can be moved around using the NVDA key in combination with the numpad, or the arrow keys if you’re using NVDA’s laptop layout. The most important keys you’ll need to know are:
Also, if using Surge XT in combination with REAPER you find that NVDA takes a few seconds to respond when exiting menus, telling REAPER to run Surge XT in a dedicated process may help. To do this, after you find Surge XT in the add FX dialog, bring up the context menu and select Run as > Dedicated process. You should need to do this only once.
The Narrator cursor performs similarly to NVDA’s Object Navigator. However, at default settings, it moves through controls sequentially, ignoring grouping information. This can be changed by going into Narrator’s settings (Control+Windows+N) and changing the “Navigation mode” combo box from “Basic” to “Advanced”. In Advanced mode, Narrator+Left or Right moves between controls within the current group as usual, Control+Narrator+Down or Up moves in and out of groups, and Narrator+Enter activates controls.
Narrator synchronizes the system focus automatically, so there’s no need to manually route focus for further adjustment using Surge XT’s native keystrokes.
Narrator includes a Find feature which can be used to jump to a specific control. You can access this by pressing Control+Narrator+F, typing in part of the name of the control you want to jump to, then hitting Enter.
The JAWS touch cursor can be activated by pressing Shift+Numpad Plus on desktop layout, or JAWS+Shift+Semicolon on laptop layout. At default settings, touch cursor ignores grouping, but this can be changed by pressing Numpad Star or JAWS+A. Once done, Left and Right arrows move through controls within a group, Down and Up arrows move into and out of groups, and Enter activates controls. You can return the arrow keys to normal operation by switching back to PC cursor (Numpad Plus on desktop, or JAWS+Semicolon twice quickly on laptop)