Quick Start Guide

Accessible Trader is a trading terminal built for blind and visually impaired traders. The chart is something you hear, every function has a keystroke, and everything that happens says so out loud. This guide gets you from a blank window to a chart, a first indicator and a first paper trade, and gives you the keys you will look up most. The User Manual explains the why behind everything here; SHORTCUTS.md and F1 in the app hold the complete key list.

1. What you are working with

Two voices at once. Your screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, Narrator, VoiceOver, TalkBack, or Orca on the web host) speaks exact values: prices, indicator readings, dialog labels, confirmations. The built-in audio engine plays the shape of the market: pitch for value, timbre for character, bells for events. The terminal calls this the Hybrid Voice model. You can run either alone (F2 for speech, F3 for sound) or both together.

On the Windows desktop client the terminal talks to NVDA and JAWS directly, because the chart there is a native canvas your screen reader cannot read through the page. Nothing to set up — whichever is running gets used, including one you start after the terminal. If the terminal is ever silent, open the Journal (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J): it records which route speech is taking and says plainly when none is available.

The sound vocabulary, in one table.

A third layer, optional. A Dot Pad tactile display (any model) can show the chart under your fingers. Windows only; see the manual's Tactile Display chapter.

2. Load your first chart

No key needed to start. Bitstamp, Kraken, Kraken Futures, Gemini, MEXC and Binance serve crypto market data without credentials, and so do most analytics feeds (CoinGecko, SEC EDGAR, Fear & Greed, CoinMetrics, FINRA, CFTC, DefiLlama, Mempool and more).

Keys worth adding, in this order. All go in the API key manager, Alt+K, and stay on your machine.

1. Alpaca (free). US equities and ETFs, and a paper trading account. Enter the paper key pair first. No indices: use SPY, QQQ, IWM, DIA, GLD, SLV, TLT. Typing ES returns Eversource Energy, not S&P futures.
2. FRED (free). The Economic analytics provider: CPI, unemployment, yields, Fed funds.
3. TwelveData (free tier). Spot gold XAU/USD works; SPX and XAG/USD need a paid tier.
4. An AI provider (optional). Claude, OpenAI, or a local Ollama. Only the AI Analyst uses it.

Broker keys (Coinbase, Schwab, Tradier, Oanda, Interactive Brokers) are for real orders through a broker you already have. Add them last.

The toolbar cascade. Tab into the toolbar's second row: Market → Provider → (Type) → Symbol → Time → Load. Each choice refills the next list and pre-selects its first entry. Choose Analytics in Market to chart data feeds instead of instruments; My Data to chart your own CSV files. A symbol list reading "API key required" means open Alt+K. Timeframe is a multiplier plus a unit; quick-pick buttons show the provider's own timeframes.

Load. Activate Load or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L from anywhere. You hear "Loading history…" then "{Symbol} on {Provider}, {Timeframe}. Ready." From then on Shift+F1 repeats the symbol, provider and timeframe, and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C focuses the chart with a fuller summary.

Is it live? A live feed announces each bar close: a short bell and "Close 42,500. Doji. New bar: Open 42,510." Those announcements are your confirmation that data is flowing. Backslash (\) jumps to the newest bar; "No live data yet" means you ran off the end of what exists.

3. How a chart is laid out

The keys in the rest of this guide move through a structure, so here is the structure.

The X axis is time, running left (past) to right (now), shared by every pane. Each step is one bar of the timeframe you loaded. The Left and Right arrows walk it.

A pane is a Y axis. The chart is a stack of panes, top to bottom. The top pane is Main: candles, the close line, and every overlay measured in price (moving averages, Bollinger Bands, VWAP). Volume is a pane of its own because volume is not a price. Every oscillator gets its own pane, because RSI runs 0 to 100 while MACD swings by hundreds, and a shared scale would flatten one of them into a sliver of the other. Alt+PageUp and Alt+PageDown move between panes and name the one you land on.

Inside a pane: series, then components. A series is one indicator; a component is one line or marker it draws, with a value on every bar. MACD is one series with three components: the MACD line, the signal line, the histogram. Up and Down walk the components of the focused series; PageUp and PageDown walk series. Some panes divide into strips: Cipher B keeps its money-flow histogram in a strip with its own axis, and Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down walk a strip across every series in the pane.

Three things live on a pane, and they are not the same.

• A component has a value on every bar (an EMA, an RSI line, a histogram) or on some bars (a buy dot). You navigate to it and hear its value.
• A reference level is a constant: RSI's 70 and 30, MACD's zero, ADX's 25. It has a value, a meaning (overbought, oversold, neutral, or a named band such as "strong trend") and an owner (the indicator's, or yours from the 0 key). Levels ping as you approach, chirp as you cross, and are the stops for Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right.
• A zone is a region rather than a line: the shaded overbought band, a support or resistance zone a level indicator carries forward, or a Value Deviation zone where price turned away from value. Zone lines speak "support at…" and "resistance at…"; shaded bands are visual only.

Three keys describe all of this. Alt+Shift+/ describes the pane you are in: what each axis measures, its range, the gridline step, and what is drawn there. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y describes the whole layout: how many panes, what is in each, what is hidden or muted. Shift+F1 says where you are. The manual's "How a chart is laid out" chapter has the household picture of all this if you want one.

Alt+Z is focus mode: the toolbar, tabs, indicator bar and footer disappear and the chart takes their height; the status line stays, with an Exit focus mode button. Every shortcut still works. Press Alt+Z again to bring the bands back — the terminal says so both ways.

4. Moving around

Time

Structure

Jumps. Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right skip to the previous or next event for the focused thing: a price crossing your trend line (on candles), a signal firing (on a dot or arrow), a crossing of the midline or an overbought/oversold line (on an oscillator), a band edge (on ADX or Choppiness), price crossing the average (on a moving average). A hidden level is not a target, and on a pane with more than one reference line — Aroon's Midpoint at 50 and its Oscillator's zero — the jump uses the line the focused component answers to. At the end: "No more {component} signals in this direction."

Formations. With Describe chart patterns on (Settings → General), , and . step between the edges of double tops, head and shoulders, triangles, wedges, flags and ranges; ; chooses which overlapping formation leads, Shift+; releases it.

Mouse and touch work too: click a bar to hear it, Shift+click to measure, double-click for the newest bar, scroll to zoom, Shift+scroll to pan, right-click or Shift+F10 for the chart menu. Touch has a navigation toolbar under the chart.

5. Playback

What playback says. Start, pause, speed and finish are always spoken. Beyond that, governed by Settings → Narration → Narrate during playback: the date or hour as the bars cross it, discrete signals on series you flagged with N (at most two per bar, the rarest first), a line crossing one of its own levels ("strong trend"), and a chart formation resolving. Continuous lines never narrate during playback, oscillator zone commentary is left to the bar close, and volume profiles say nothing while playing. F3 turns the tones off and leaves the words; F2 mutes the words.

6. When the terminal speaks on its own

The bar close. One sentence per bar: the closing candle and its pattern, then whatever your narrated indicators made of it, up to five clauses, most consequential first. "Close 64,905 at 14:32, Bullish engulfing. New bar: Open 64,910. Triple confluence buy. RSI 14: RSI overbought."

N chooses what may speak. Press N on a series (or on one component to narrow it) and its signals, level crossings, moving-average crosses and cloud entries are spoken at each bar close. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+O switches narration off everywhere. Settings → Narration holds the switches: Announce new bars, Narrate candle patterns as they form, Narrate chart formations as they form (off by default), Narrate signals on bar close, Narrate during playback, Speak time landmarks during playback.

Where it goes. Whatever is about the chart in front of you is spoken here. Anything else (another tab, a symbol with no tab, or the terminal running with the browser closed) arrives as a system notification, behind one switch that is on by default: Alt+J → Delivery settings → Events you cannot see.

Two mutes, one rule. F2 silences what you asked for (navigation, summaries); Shift+F2 silences what happens to you (alerts, new bars, narration). Errors and money (fills, stops, take-profits) speak through both. Alerts ignore every narration switch.

7. Volume, mute and hide

None of the mutes persist: every start is audible.

8. Indicators

An indicator is a calculation over the bars, drawn as one or more lines or markers. Trend indicators (moving averages) smooth price; momentum oscillators (RSI, MACD, Stochastic) measure speed and swing about a midline; volatility indicators (ATR, Bollinger Bands) measure range; volume indicators weigh moves by participation. The manual's indicator primer explains the common ones.

Add one with Alt+A. Categories: Multi-Signal, Trend, Momentum, Cycles, Positioning, Derivatives, Volatility, Volume, Profiles, Overlays, My Data. Arrow to it, Enter. The dialog says whether it joins the price pane or gets its own. Drawing tools are not in this dialog; they are under Alt+D.

Reach it with PageDown or Alt+PageDown, then Up and Down through its components.

Tune it with P (or Shift+F12). Five tabs: General (parameters), Appearance, Levels, Sonification (a sound patch per component, with bullish/bearish or above/below-midline pairs), Speech. Save as Defaults makes the next indicator of that type start this way.

0 marks the line that matters. On an oscillator, 0 toggles the pane's declared neutral (50 on RSI, zero on MACD, −50 on Williams %R). On the price pane it marks the price under the cursor. Press 0 again on your own level to remove it. Indicator-declared levels live in Properties.

Delete removes the focused series after confirmation. Ctrl+Z takes it back.

Heikin-Ashi (Alt+C) replaces each candle with a smoothed one: its close is the average of open, high, low and close, its open the midpoint of the previous smoothed candle. Trends read as runs of one colour, so they are easier to hear. Two things to know: the smoothed prices are averages nobody traded at, so every indicator, the close line and every formation level keep reading the raw candles; and with HA on, the candle you hear and its pattern are the smoothed ones. Alt+L switches the price axis to logarithmic for long histories, and the sound follows it: a level-pitched component in the price pane takes its pitch from where the value sits on the scale as drawn.

Alt+F decides what the price pane is sized to hold. By default it holds the candles and every visible overlay, so a Bollinger band that swings wider than the bars widens the pane instead of running off it — which matters to the ear as much as the eye, because anything outside the pane is silent as well as invisible. Press Alt+F for "fitting price only": overlays may leave the pane and go quiet, but the price line gets the whole pitch range, which is what you want when you are listening for small moves. Press it again to go back.

9. Drawing tools

Drawings are placed by sequential anchoring: no dragging, no Enter.

1. Arrow to the first point.
2. Press the tool's chord. Speech names the point you set and the point it wants next: "Trend line: first point at 42,500.00, 14:30. Navigate to the second point and press the shortcut again."
3. Arrow to the next point and press the same chord. Three-point tools take a third press.
4. Completion speaks the tool's answer: the measure tool its distance, percent and bar count; the risk/reward tool "Risk to reward, 1 to 3.00."
5. Escape cancels a drawing in progress.

Alt+Shift+R is the rectangle and Alt+Shift+M is the two-point measure tool; the three-point entry, stop and target tool is Risk/Reward on Alt+Shift+P.

Afterwards. Focus a drawing with PageUp or PageDown and each bar reads its value and which side price is on. Shift+Left / Shift+Right move the selected anchor a bar, Shift+Up / Shift+Down move its price, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G selects the next anchor, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B snaps it to the bar's high, low, open or close. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo and redo, fifty deep. Shift+F10 opens the drawing's menu. Name a drawing in Properties (P) so it reads as "Weekly resistance" instead of "Trend line 3".

10. Trading safely

Practise first. Settings (F12) → General → Paper trading, then Save. Every order on every chart then goes to a built-in simulator: 100,000 USDT to start, fills at real live prices, a 0.04% fee, brackets, OCO pairs, trailing exits and 1x shorts all simulated. Reset it from the same tab; it asks first. On the hosted website paper is always on.

Know which account you are on. The status bar carries a PAPER or a LIVE badge. The dashboard (Alt+T) speaks it when it opens: "{Provider}: LIVE account '{name}'. Orders here are real money." The API key for this order dropdown at the top of the dashboard is the choice of record; anything not marked Paper is treated as live. A key marked Paper on a venue with no practice environment (Bitstamp, Coinbase, Interactive Brokers, Kraken, Kraken Futures, MEXC, Schwab) is refused, never routed live.

The dashboard (Alt+T). A ticket (BUY/SELL, quantity, type, stop loss, take profit, trailing exits, a Size button that sizes from a risk percentage and a stop) and five tabs: Positions, Balances, Orders, History, Book. Positions has inline stop and target editors and Close position / Close at limit buttons.

Quick trade from the chart.

Nothing places until a stop is set, and the stop always travels with the entry. What the percentage means is a setting (Settings → General → "Quick trade: the risk percentage means"): the position's value (the default: 1% of a 100,000 account is a 1,000 position, whatever the stop) or what I lose if the stop is hit (the "1% rule": size = risk ÷ stop distance, which can be a large position on a tight stop). Every bar reading reminds you that you are armed.

Live orders get a spoken review with Confirm and Cancel, plus warn-only checks on liquidation distance and correlated exposure. Change the ticket after the review and nothing is sent until you review again.

Money always speaks. "Order filled…", "Stop loss hit…", "Order rejected for… {reason}" come through every mute and every playback. The manual's Risk Management chapter is the one to read before the first real order.

11. Alerts and monitoring

Alerts (Alt+J). Name, target (price, candle, indicator, point of control), condition, level, delivery (speech, earcon, both). Alerts are scoped to the chart they were created on unless you choose "any symbol". Delivery settings in the same dialog holds email, Telegram, named webhooks (Discord, Slack), the Events you cannot see notification switch, and the Shortest timeframe to announce floor. Advanced condition trees are available but evaluate only while their chart is open.

Two monitoring switches, Settings → General.

• Keep watching other tabs (off by default): the other open tabs keep polling (every 30 seconds, or live-streamed on exchanges that allow it), their alerts and strategies keep evaluating, and their events arrive as notifications prefixed with the symbol. Background strategies announce; they never place orders.
• Keep monitoring when the browser is closed (off by default, local web host only): the terminal keeps running with no browser, checking about once a minute. It evaluates every alert with a symbol, reports order fills on every venue you hold a key for, announces bar closes and the narration ladder for your saved tabs, and delivers all of it as system notifications. Closing the last tab sends one notification saying whether anything will be watched. It reports and never acts.

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M speaks the status of both halves. The system tray icon (local web host; Windows app) can restore the browser, show recent alerts, silence alerts and bar closes for 30 minutes (money still comes through), toggle browser-closed monitoring, and exit. On the Windows app the close button minimises to the tray by default. The Mac and mobile apps have no headless monitor.

12. Settings, workspaces and sharing

Settings (F12). Nine tabs on the desktop, eight on the web (no Braille tab there): General, Speech, Narration, Sonification, Braille, Appearance, Keyboard, License, About. A search box at the top jumps to any setting. Nothing is saved until you press Save; Escape and Cancel discard. Appearance choices preview immediately and are put back on Cancel; keyboard rebinds save immediately. The toolbar's icons carry no text by default — the spoken name and the tooltip are unchanged — and Appearance → Toolbar captions puts the labels back. Speech is how the terminal says what you asked for; Narration is what it says when you pressed nothing.

Workspaces. Every tab, its symbol and timeframe, indicators with their settings and sounds, drawings, Heikin-Ashi and log scale, pane heights and running strategies. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W saves, Ctrl+Alt+W loads. The session autosaves every 30 seconds and resumes on start ("Resumed your last session: N tabs"); alerts persist on their own.

Tabs. Alt+Shift+N opens one everywhere; Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab work on the desktop apps only. On the web press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T to focus the tab bar, then arrows, 1 to 9, Insert to add and Delete to close.

Sharing your setup. Themes copy and paste as text (Appearance → Edit theme → Copy theme text). Sound patches export and import as JSON (Alt+W). Strategies export as .atstrat files and scripts as .atpkg packages. Everything else (settings, shortcuts, workspaces, watchlists, screens, indicator defaults) is a JSON file in the app-data folder you can copy: ~/.local/share/AccessibleTrader/ on Linux and macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA%\AccessibleTrader\ on Windows.

13. Platform notes

• Windows, macOS, iOS, Android: the native app. Windows drives the Dot Pad; iOS cannot compile custom scripts.
• Linux: the web host in a browser with Orca. Also the recommended build everywhere.
• The keyboard is the same on every head. Drawing chords are Alt+Shift+letter everywhere. The only differences are the browser-reserved tab chords above, and F11 for bar replay (use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P in a browser). F1 always shows the bindings in effect on your host.
• Windows with two keyboard layouts: hold Alt+Shift, then press the letter. Mac with VoiceOver: set the VoiceOver modifier to Caps Lock, or the Ctrl+Alt+Shift chords collide.

14. Keyboard reference

Time and viewport

Panes, series, components

Playback and bar replay

Speech, sound, volume

Indicators and chart

Drawings

Trading

Dialogs and panels

Tabs and workspaces

15. First five minutes

1. Tab into the toolbar, pick Crypto, keep the first provider and symbol, press Load. Wait for "Ready."
2. Press Right Arrow a few times and listen to the pitch follow price. Press Alt+Shift+D on a bar.
3. Press Space. Listen for ten seconds. Press Space again.
4. Press Alt+A, arrow to Momentum, add RSI. Press Alt+PageDown to reach its pane, Up and Down through its components, Ctrl+Right to jump to its next overbought or oversold crossing.
5. Press N on the RSI series, and leave the chart running: the next bar close will tell you what RSI did.
6. Press F12, tick Paper trading, Save. Press Alt+T and place a market buy for a small quantity with a stop below the price. Listen to the fill.
7. Press F1 and skim the full key list. Then read the manual's chapters on how a chart is laid out and on risk management.