By pressing Esc, focus mode can be left (announced by a different 'beep' sound) and browse mode is active again.When focus mode is active, a 'beep' sound is played.

When the screen reader's cursor is on an editable element, it allows to switch to focus mode using the Enter key.

This mode - where keystrokes aren't intercepted but sent directly to the controlled application - is called 'focus' mode: Instead, they should be passed to the browser, so typing H, E, R, B, E, R, T wouldn't trigger screen reader specific actions anymore, but simply result in the typed text 'Herbert'.

So you need to tell the screen reader not to intercept your keystrokes anymore.

If you would type the H key now (while being in browse mode), the screen reader would move its cursor to the next heading - not what you intended to do!.

After a while, you reach a text field ( ), and you want to enter your first name 'Herbert' into it: Suppose you're reading a website's content using your screen reader, by moving its cursor from element to element. While browse mode allows reading elements, it does not allow interaction with them (for example entering text into a field or choosing a value from a combobox). Notice: in other resources, browse mode may sometimes also be called 'read' mode.

Just to make it clear: the web browser's focus is not the same thing as the cursor of the screen reader (although they often move synchronously).In browse mode, the screen reader cursor can be placed on every element on a website, even on those which aren't inherently focusable by keyboard, for example headings or paragraphs.This allows quick navigation through different elements of a website.By pressing the K key, the cursor is moved to the next link ( ).By pressing the H key, the cursor is moved to the next heading (, , etc.).In addition, screen readers offer more sophisticated ways of moving the cursor, for example:.In browse mode, the user typically reads content sequentially line by line using the Down arrow key (or Up for going back).Reading through a website by moving the screen reader's cursor through a page's information fragments is called 'browse' mode: We cannot overestimate the importance of thoroughly knowing their differences. The most common ones are browse mode and focus mode.

The relevant desktop screen readers on Windows offer different ways of interacting with the underlying application.

Chrome accessibility screen reader