I am an experienced user, so I'm looking for tips more than perfect
solutions.
Do any of you others have this problem? Web pages seem to be getting less
convenient. I'm not talking about inaccessible. You can read everything
fine
-- just inconvenient. Kind of like putting the wheelchair ramp out back
with
the dumpsters instead of near the building's front door.
It used to be that when I googled for information, I'd find a variety of
mailing list archives with interesting posts. Or I'd find pages that
individuals created about that particular topic. But today, I tend instead
to find wikis and web forums, and sites with so many ads that I have to
read
hundreds of lines of irrelevant data only to discover a single line of
content, like "no search results matched your query"!
In wikis, half the links you select go to a page, with the same pleuthora
of
links and the message: "You have followed a link to a page that does not
exist yet." If it doesn't exist, why do links take me there, anyway? I'd
feel more charitable about contributing to a wiki, if they didn't insist
on
wasting my time!
For another example, web forums will have more lines of text devoted to
trivia about who the user is, how many times he's posted, and when he
joined
the forum and whether he's online, rather than what content his message
contains. And often the post turns out to be something like "I need the
same
information" or "That's a good idea." This is the sort of thing you might
say on the phone to a friend, but wasting bandwidth posting it seems
really
nuts.
Ad-supported sites don't seem to have any simple way to skip to the
content
directly. For a good example, just look at amazon.com. If they hadn't
invented amazon.com/access, I would've stopped shopping at amazon a long
time ago. But ten years ago, way before JAWS had quick keys, amazon was a
pleasure to navigate with screen access! And it worked fine without any
fancy virtual cursor!
Web forums are a nightmare. Every forum page has a list of posting rules,
thread tools and other clutter that I wish were in one place and not on
every single page. I don't want to reply, change my font size or submit
the
post to digg -- I just want to READ the darned thing! I don't care if
smileys are on, and how many cups of coffee the user had, I want to know
what he has to say!
Yet, other blind people are regularly accessing these things and not
complaining, so what am I missing? For example, the Hadley School for the
Blind and the AFB both have active web forums. There is a JAWS wiki,
though
the only thing I could actually find in it was a list of JAWS mailing
lists.
And many blind people put up blogs on sites full of advertising! And even
with blind bloggers' sites, you have to skip past reams of the irrelevant!
I am familiar with the quick keys for surfing of course. But they rarely
work in this Brave New Web-world. On websites devoted to product reviews
and
downloads, using H or number keys to move between headings takes me to
headings with words like "recommended" "other categories" and "download"
only it's a link to download something I'm not interested in. Try the
winamp
page for example -- it's easy to download a trial version of the
commercial
product by mistake.
On wikis, headings only appear if the user who edited that page added the
appropriate HTML code. There are lots of links, visited and unvisited
links
and many promising other page elements you can quick-key around. But most
of
those wiki-links lead nowhere. It's like being in one of those
text-adventure mazes! You are enticed by promises of cattegories, but how
can you tell which lead to only empty pages? I had planned to contribute
to
the JAWS wiki but after spending fifteen minutes and finding nothing, I
decided that a well-written contribution belonged elsewhere!
And on web forums, it is rare to see a heading at all. In blogs, you see
headings only if the blogger is a screen reader user, and even then not
all
the time. I guess some of the readers have more patience than I do.
Typing N to navigate to the next non-link text, usually takes me to an ad.
I
can learn all about increasing my sex appeal or how to get a stuffed
gorilla
absolutely free, but it's not the way to learn about a particular product
I'm researching. Often a page will have a full and fascinating product
review, but I actually have to read the entire text to locate it.
Typing M to go to the next frame is equally useless. It jumps between more
ad frames and skips any content the page might contain.
And that's a big might. It feels like I could read for hours before
actually
reading any real information. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I am surprised to
find a large hunk of information nestled among the google ad frames and
the
invitations to create teknurati tags. But sometimes, all that web page
structure is there, but content is not.
I've tried lots of other quick keys too -- O for object elements, d for
next
different element, L for lists, I for individual elements etc. I know
basic
HTML, so I'm ahead of many JAWS users, but how should I know what sort of
HTML was used to create any particular page? The JAWS quick keys help when
reviewing content I'm familiar with, but if I'm familiar with it, I often
don't need to review it!
The keystrokes for navigating form controls are useful when I'm done
researching -- actually buying something. I do appreciate the hard work
that
has gone in to making it easy to navigate a web page with structure. But
it
feels like these new web pages lack structure. In a forum for example,
there
appears to be no element you can navigate to position your virtual cursor
at
the top of the text of an actual post.
Yet there must be some sort of structure. My husband, who is sighted can
quickly find information, and he certainly doesn't read the entire page to
do it. When asked to analyze his process he says that he skips past the
menus and toolbars and ads. Why can't this work so well for us JAWS
users?Why do all these great commands for skimming past unwanted material
work best on web pages designed by or for blind people?
And more important, how do the rest of you JFW users surf for information,
without it consuming your entire life? I work full-time, I sleep, I'm a
homemaker, I try to fit in some exercise. I want to be able to fix an
audio
problem on my PC, research the appropriateness of a video for my little
nephew, find a good recipe using arugula, or locate a good mexican
restaurant in Indianapolis. And I want a simple search like this to not
consume an entire night! The question is what am I missing?
--Debee
Deborah Armstrong (formerly Norling)
Visit the JAWS Users List home page at:
http://www.jaws-users.com
Visit the Blind Computing home page at:
http://www.blind-computing.com
Address for the list archives:
http://www.mail-archive.com/jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com
To post to this group, send email to
jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject
or body of a blank message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Use the following address in order to contact the management team
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If you wish to join the Blind Computing list send a blank email to the
following address:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
