Activity
March Madness: Keyboard shortcut tournament
Can you pick the most popular keyboard shortcut? Join in the March Madness with this fun AT game!
Update 3/20/23: Here is the new March Madness link. See below for updated schedule.
Update 3/16/23: There is a glitch in the tournament form which will be resolved soon. Please wait for the updated round 1; the new start date for Round 1 voting is Monday, March 20th.
March in the US marks the end of basketball season and provides so many opportunities to run fun bracket competitions. Maybe you’re like me, and you like keyboard shortcuts more than basketball. Join me and my students in the 2023 Screenreader Shortcut Tournament of Champions!
Last year I ran this with five students and used an Excel spreadsheet to manually keep track of votes. We started with a student-generated list of 64 shortcuts and finally crowned our winner, F6! Participants were shocked when fan-favorite alt + F4 wasn’t the overall champion, but it lost out in round 6 to control + F. It was a great way to spark conversations about shortcuts that some of the students didn’t know and to argue for our favorites. I’m going to try to run a global, online version this year, but if the tech doesn’t work out, you can still play along at home.
This activity is designed for intermediate screen reader users (know how to touch type, may use a screen reader daily) but can be adapted to beginners. Voting is based on the function of the keyboard shortcut, not the specific keys, so that all operating systems and screen readers can participate. The JAWS/Windows commands are included in parentheses after each contestant and in the resource document for this post since that’s what my students use.
How can you use it?
- Vote in our online bracket poll and check back as each round opens to place your next round of votes. The link to the poll will be updated periodically as we get further into the competition.
- Hold your own contest with the commands your students have come up with, commands from an IEP goal, or use the attached list. If you only have one student working on this skill, they can still run their own bracket by choosing their favorite out of each pair of commands.
- Instead of voting on the function, just say the keyboard shortcut (for example, control + c instead of copy) to see which commands they know the best. Encourage students to try the keyboard command if they aren’t familiar with what it does and find out what happens.
- If you are going at your own pace, work it into lessons by voting on two or three contests as a warm-up.
Rounds Schedule
New rounds start Monday and Thursday (with the first round going for a full week). Here’s the NEW schedule:
- Round 1: March 20
- Round 2: Monday March 27
- Round 3: Thursday March 30
- Round 4: Monday April 3
- Round 5: Thursday April 6
- Round 6: Monday April 10
Tournament ends Weds, April 10th at midnight PST.
Warning, the first round has 32 contests and will take a while to get through!
Keyboard commands
Here is the NEW Screenreader Shortcut Tournament of Champions voting link. Vote now!
Download the Keyboard shortcut tournament 2023 JAWS laptop reference sheet
Would you like to make a companion to my reference document for NVDA, VoiceOver, or another screen reader? Email Diane! [email protected]
Update: The 2023 Winner is . . . . Alt + F4!
by Jennifer Soltis
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