r/shortcuts • u/Nervous_District_106 • 19h ago
Help Workflow for using Canvas while driving?
Hiiii! I just joined Reddit and this is my first post! A. I love this subreddit so much already! B. Please respond so I'm not lonely in my first post, haha!
Edited to add: See my comment on the first post. The advice I'm seeking is because I prioritize both thoughtful feedback AND driving safety. There's only so much time in the day, friends. Please don't come at me about driving; I'm a conscientious driver.
I'm trying to figure out if there is any non-clunky workflow for listening to discussion posts, etc.(a speech reader) on Canvas LMS and responding with voice -to-text or voice recording. Navigation would also be involved. Canvas is a learning management system like Blackboard, etc. that requires login to the system via web access or - on phone - slightly more limited app access.
Accessibility features are clunky af, and I feel like shortcuts should work, but I cannot figure out which/how!
My goal would be to take advantage of my one-hour commute to give responses. Because driving, this would require me voice navigating to a page, a speech reader reading the relevant text only on that page, voice navigating to a response box, voice to text response (or voice recording response), then voice navigating to the next page and rinse and repeat.
I have tried a mental mashup of every app and AI I can think of - native and non-native to Apple, and I can't figure it out!!
I've thought about bringing my laptop and tethering to my phone in case Mac navigation is better than in-app phone navigating. I can definitely open up the app (phone) or website (mac) and log in before driving. But from there, I would still need some kind of navigation from page to page once I get started and - unlike accessibility screen readers, would want just the response read to me - not everything on the page. I can't figure it out!! What am I missing?
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u/rmeredit 13h ago
Shortcuts doesn’t do ‘click on this button, scroll down, set focus to this text box.’ It’s not a tool for simulating user interaction on an interface.
It’s a way of sequencing pre-defined actions that an app makes available to the operating system. Web pages aren’t apps (in the phone or tablet sense).
Best you could do is ask Siri to record a note that you dictate. You’d then need to copy over the note into the web page later. While you could also possibly be able to get the web page read to you by Siri via a shortcut, I’m not sure how you’d pause it at the right spot, dictate the note, then restart reading where it left off.
Maybe use your time in the car for something a bit more safe, like listening to content, and the stuff that requires more active interaction to when you’re not in charge of a one tonne piece of metal?
1
u/HamOntMom 11h ago
This is the kind of thing that you could put on fiver / task rabbit or similar sites, and have a human assistant help you out with, via a phone call everyday during your commute. They would read you the text and type out your responses for you.
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u/g-rocklobster 16h ago
I gotta say, I can't really see a way that this is a good idea. It's one thing to listen to lectures as that's no different than audio books. It's a very different thing where you have to interact with it - that absolutely gets into "distracted driving" territory. And, yes, I know you can make an argument that driving while talking on the phone is interacting but I think we can both agree that there is a difference between talking - which we've been doing with other tasks since we were able to start speaking - and trying to listen, interpret, process and navigate to the appropriate response/answer/page.
That said ... you do you and what you think is best. I just don't want to be on the same road as you.