While I understand that sometimes, when tabbing to a form field, browse mode is not automatically disabled. I experienced this at the United States Post Office (usps.com) site during the Christmas mailing season. Unfortunately, when my sighted wife tried to used my computer to send a package
She encountered difficulty entering data into the form fields because browse mode was not disabled. Is there a quick way to temporarily disable WE for when a sighted person needs to use my computer? I had initially enabled a hot key to simply silence speech, but this now seems insufficient. Thanks, Rick From: Marc Solomon [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2015 2:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Browse Mode switching required, when? Hi Peter, I didn't see any responses to your inquiry so I thought I would reply with my insight on this very important topic. Browse Mode was created to allow Window-Eyes users to browse and navigate web pages more efficiently. When Browse Mode is enabled, Window-Eyes intercepts all of your keystrokes and interprets almost all of them as navigation commands. If you want to interact with form controls or widgets on a webpage such as an edit box or slider control, Browse Mode needs to be turned off. Doing so, tells Window-Eyes to ignore your keystrokes and send them to the web browser to be executed. If you don't do this and try to use your Arrow keys to adjust the value of the slider control, Window-Eyes will interpret the Arrow keys as navigation commands and attempt to move you to the next character or line on the web page. There are a few exceptions to this rule such as being able to activate a button or check a checkbox with Browse Mode on. The reason why these exceptions exist is because the keyboard command you use to activate a button or check a check box, (i.e. Spacebar), is never used for navigation and does not conflict with any of the Browse Mode navigation commands. In summary, you can always turn off Browse Mode if you want to interact with a form control or other types of widgets being used on today's application style web pages. Once Browse Mode is off, you can use standard keyboard techniques to enter text into an edit box, adjust the value of a slider control, select an option in a combo box, navigate a tree view widget, etc. Please keep in mind that this assumes that the web page author is using standard HTML controls or is following the ARIA best design practices (http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-practices-20090224/) established by the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3). As you know, not all web authors make accessibility a priority and is why many websites are still poorly designed very difficult to use with a screen reader. With that being said, at least now there are tools and techniques that can be used to create accessible web content that is both feature rich and visually pleasing. Let's continue to advocate for accessible web design, and the more our voices are heard, the more inclusive the web will be. Regards, Marc From: Peter Duran <[email protected]> Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2015 04:19:15 +0000 Hello You are able to pick your preferences for your Google account at: www.google.com/preferences On that web page resides a Slider which lets you specify the number of results shown per displayed page. When you move onto that slider, none of the standard methods to pick a value work. By trial and error, I found out that you must switch browse modes via Ctrl + Alt + A to permit the selection of values via navigation keys. The question, when and where is browse mode switching required? It is confusing in beta 3. Peter Duran If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
