Screenshot of iOS home page with accept or decline Airdrop menu displayed
Story

Using AirDrop to Share Notes

Learn to use AirDrop to quickly transfer documents, pictures and videos from one Apple device to another.

I learn my best ipad tips and tricks from my Vision Impaired students.  Recently I was working on Whole Word Initial Letter Contractions with one of my 11 year old students.  We were using an iPad Air (with Voice Over on) running ios 10.1.1 and a Refreshabraille 18.  When my student was done writing the contractions into the Notes app, I asked him to email the word list to me.  He paused and said, “Why don’t you just let me AirDrop it to you?”  I was intrigued because I had never found myself using the AirDrop feature for anything.  Of course I was more than willing to take his advice.  He walked me through the steps of how to send the word list using the AirDrop feature.  We did the following on both ipads:

  1. We made sure Bluetooth was toggled on for both devices.
  2. Used Voiceover to move the VoiceOver focus to the Status Bar, by using one finger to tap the top of the screen of the iPad.

iPad Home screen with VoiceOver focus on the time in the Status bar.

3. We swiped up from the bottom of the iPad screen with 3 fingers to reveal the Control Center. 

Control Center showing on the bottom half of an iPad's Home screen.

4.  We single finger swiped to the right until the VoiceOver focus was on the AirDrop option. 

VoiceOver focus on AirDrop button in the Control Center.

5.  We single finger swiped through the AirDrop options (Receiving Off, Contacts Only, and Everyone).

6.  For this session, we decided to make our ipads discoverable to Everyone, so we double tapped the ipad screen to select the Everyone option. 

Screenshot of AirDrop menu options

7.  We exited the Control Center by tapping the home button once.

Screenshot of iPad Home screen with VoiceOver focus on Notes app.

8.  My student did the following on his ipad to send the note to my ipad:

Screenshot of VoiceOver focus on the Share button in the Notes app.

9.  After opening the Share Note feature, he selected my ipad as the AirDrop recipient (We made sure my ipad was on–screen on–and my ipad was discoverable).

10.  He double tapped the icon showing “Ericka’s iPad”.

Screenshot of Notes app with VoiceOver focus on Erick's iPhone

On my ipad, I did the following: 

11. My ipad received a pop-up saying, “Airdrop:  “iPad would like to share a note.”

Screenshot of iPhone with AirDrop accept or decline popup.

12. I single finger swiped to the Accept option. 

13.  I single finger double tapped on Accept option, and the note (Word List) was available on my ipad!

14. I wrote a note back to my student on the same note (Word List) and Air Dropped my comments back to my student’s ipad. 

15.  He was able to read my comments right away!

Here is the link to the how-to guide by Apple:  

iOS: Open Notification Center and Control Center with VoiceOver

By Ericka

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
A smiling child holding a toy eagle
Activity

Bird song book and bird-related activities

EPIQ logo
Event

EPIQ (Experience Programming in Quorum) 2024

Solar eclipse diagram with the moon between the sun and earth.
Activity

Break the Braille code: Solar eclipse resource