Thank you, Don, This was a helpful explanation. Yahoo's mail page has
something on it saying that automatic page updates might cause a problem for
screenreaders and giving a link for screenreader users to click. I would
have copied the text exactly, but the page got all jumpy when I tried to
select text. I have clicked the link that's supposed to help, but don't see
a difference. Sometimes the Yahoo mail page works all right. Other times,
and for the life of me, I don't think I do anything differently, that
application mode comes on. . When that happens, I just try to leave the
site, and sometimes I can't even do that. I haven't tried the Jaws 11 beta
yet to see if there's a difference.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald Marang" <donald.mar...@gmail.com>
To: <jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 19, 2009 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Application mode question
I think they are using new technology to make their site more interactive.
These Web 2.0 web sites act more like a stand alone application! I know FS
is working to enable JAWS to continue to use these sites. The new web 2.0
sites are very dynamic and get updated frequently. This makes it very
difficult for screen readers. It is also difficult for me to learn how to
use such dynamic sites without vision! I suppose it will be possible if I
and the screen reader can concentrate on a portion of the screen. But
that's what the sighted love about these sites. For instance, they use a
site like FriendFeed.com to watch several real time services such as
twitter, facebook, RSS, and more all at once!
FS says that JAWS 10 and especially 11 have incorporated technologies like
ARIA (Accessible Rich Interactive Application) and UIA (User Interface
Accessibility). I am not certain about those acronyms. I think most of
the work here is done within JAWS and should be transparent to us. The
"Application mode" should indicate that this site works more like an
application. I have seen some sites like Google Voice and Google Mail
provide keyboard shortcuts for almost every function. Sometimes these
hotkeys have a conflict with JAWS. To confuse things more, Google is
working on allowing sites like Google mail to be pulled off and work
off-line like a stand alone application when using their Chrome browser.
Currently, Chrome is completely inaccessible because it is based on the
webkit open source browser engine. The technology and code that might
make webkit accessible was just developed at the makers of System Access
in a desperate attempt too make the new iTunes for Windows accessible
again! More exciting is the fact that they did this as an open source
project. This means that the code will be made publically available and
added to the open source webkit project for everyone's benefit! Note that
among others, Safari Chrome, and ITunes 9.0 all use webkit. I hope
Freedom Scientific and all of the other adaptive technology developers
implement similar solutions.
Sorry I can't tell you how to navigate and use a particular web site /
application? For the most part, they are addressing accessibility, but I
don't think everyone agrees on how to implement and use these new
technologies yet. I would love to see some documentation and tutorials
from Freedom Scientific on how to use JAWS on these Web 2.0 sites.
Don Marang
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ann Byrne" <ann...@sbcglobal.net>
To: <jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com>
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Application mode question
I have only seen it on Yahoo! web sites. Only in the past ten or so days.
Looks like Yahoo! invented something new.
At 08:50 PM 9/18/2009, you wrote:
Great question! I second that notion about a definition for appplication
mode because I have come across it numerous times.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you
nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain
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