One of the most talked about features of the new Windows 8 is the Start screen. The old Start menu was a vertical list of text items with one or two columns, and thus easy to navigate with the keyboard. The new Start screen is a horizontal list which can have a varying number of rows. It contains tiles which can be one unit wide or two units wide. This means navigating it simply with arrow keys can be tricky.
Here are two ways of using the Start screen to find what you want quickly and efficiently, plus a way to revert to the old Start menu.
Moving by tile through the Start screen
If you use the Narrator screen reader that ships with Windows 8, you can use the shortcut CapsLock + RightArrow to move one tile at a time through the Start screen. Each time you press the keystroke, focus moves to the next tile, which might be to the right of the current tile or below it. Similarly, CapsLock + LeftArrow will move focus to the previous tile.
It is to be hoped that other screen readers will include a similar way of navigating the Start screen. Neither NVDA nor JAWS have such a feature, but the forthcoming Window-Eyes 8 will do so.
Searching the Start screen
An alternative to moving around the Start screen is to search it. The quick way to do this is to press the Windows key and then just start typing. Although the Start screen does not have a search edit as the old Start menu did, as soon as you start typing, a search of the apps begins.
After you've typed some or all of what you're looking for, use DownArrow to move through the results. These are presented in columns and rows, but pressing DownArrow repeatedly will move from the bottom of one column to the top of the next, so this doesn't present a problem.
You can also search the Start screen for a Setting or a File. There are two ways to do this.
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Start the search as suggested above, but instead of using DownArrow to look through the results, press Tab once to move to a list of things you can search. Focus is at the top of the list, on Apps, but you can DownArrow to Settings or Files, press Enter to choose it, and then use DownArrow to move through the results for that category.
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Press Windows + W to open the Start screen and indicate a search of the Settings, or Windows + F to indicate a search of the Files. In either case, after using the keystroke, type what you're searching for and then use DownArrow to move through the results.
Bring back the Start menu!
A number of third party applications exist that re-introduce the familiar Start menu. One example is the Classic Shell.
Classic Shell allows you to choose a Start menu that resembles the Classic one-column view, or an XP or Vista/7 default with two columns. You can also choose whether to have a visible Start button on the desktop, whether to skip the Start screen and go straight to the desktop with the computer starts, and whether to have similar retro settings for Internet Explorer and File Explorer.
One thing to bear in mind with these kinds of applications is that they are designed for mouse users. I've found using Classic Shell with the keyboard works sometimes, but at other times although the menu appears on screen, it doesn't take keyboard focus. For this reason, it's impossible to recommend such an application. If you find one that works well with the keyboard, please let us know so that we can spread the word.
For more information visit the RNIB page about Windows 8.