I have become a fairly skilled user of the Peapod service, and since I had
so much trouble with it in the beginning, I thought I'd post my tips to this
list.
* I must admit I'm behind reading the list, so hope I don't duplicate anyone
else's efforts. *
Peapod is a shopping service that lets you buy your groceries over the web.
They have a difficult, frame-filled site that isn't too accessible. But
between improvements made to their site and improvements made to JFW, and a
little sighted help, I finally can use it to get all my grocery shopping
done.
Successful experiences are based on using JFW 3.3.26 or later and Internet
Explorer 5.0 or later. It's even more diffuclt with earlier Internet
Explorers and I never could use it with any older version of JFW.
Go to www.peapod.com. There, you'll be asked to supply a user name and
password to get an account. This part is pretty accessible, but a little
sighted help can speed things up. Your help doesn't need to be computer
literate though. You'll also supply a "passord hint" which will help you if
you forget your password.
Once you register, the pages will be the same from then on. Registration is
free and they don't need a credit card until you actually "check out" so you
can play with the service all you want.
After you register when you go to peapod.com, you can log in. There are
links which read "user name" and "password" but don't pick them. They merely
take you to help screens that tell you what the peapod service needs to
know. Tab past all that until you get to an unlabeled edit box. This should
contain your name. Depending on how you set up IE, it might fill it in for
you automatically.
Fill in your name and tab once to get to another unlabeled edit box. Fill in
your password which will appear as asterisks. Tab to a button labeled simply
"button" and press enter. This is the actual log-in button and I only found
it through hours of trial and error.
Once you are logged in you are at a screen with six frames. They are labeled
"frame1-top" frame1-bottom" "frame 2" frame3" "frame4" and "frame5". I
think the exposed object model for IE is what's providing this info to the
JFW scripts because my sighted help doesn't see these frame labels onscreen.
As you move through the frames with ctrl-tab, the contents of the frame will
be read. Empty sounding frames actually have graphics in them. JFW won't
even see the graphics as graphics but trust me, there's stuff there.
the names of frame2 frame3 and frame4 change, but they always are prefixed
with this not-so-helpful prefix.
Before going further let me tell you that most of what you learned to do
from the JFW help for IE won't work. Pressing Insert-F5 to make the page
easy to read will reformat the page into something even less readable than
what was originally there. Pressing Insert-F7 to get a handy list box of
links you can select will give you a huge list box of links whith names like
"javescript B5423" and some of the links are simply extra-long URLS with
lots of ampersands in them. Insert-F7 with this web page is *TOTALLY
USELESS!!!* Insert-F9 which will let you select from a list box of frame
names will let you select all the unhelpful names I already mentioned. So
forget any of those insert keystrokes.
Don't try tabbing around much either. It will cause JFW to read more
irrelevant and confusing information.
But do try the ctrl-pgup and ctrl-pgdn once you are safely ensconsed inside
a frame and it will read just that frame, and scroll it if you are lucky.
Sometimes for reasons known only to some developer at HJ, the frame won't
scroll. My sighted help says each web page frame has its own scroll bar, but
JFW doesn't see them on any page I've tried. So if a frame doesn't scroll
you'll be forced to tab through a forest of irrelevance until you force IE
to scroll the frame for you. And there are other tricks I'll get to soon.
Frame1 top-frame is used for the toolbar links that don't change. I know of
no quick keystroke to get you there, so you just have to press tab a lot,
but to do most things on Peapod, you'll want to make that your starting
point. Here you can select links to create a personal list, express shop,
view or change your order, brows the aisles, or search for a particular
item.
When you select any link in this frame it changes the contents of Frame2
which is the main work frame. More about that later.
Frame1-bottom frame has Help and Exit. Why it needs its own frame, I don't
know.
Frame2 is the main work area. This is where groceries are listed when you
search or browse, and it is also where you actually click to buy something.
Its contents changes depending on what you are doing.
Frame3 is your cart view. You can always hear its contents reliably but JFW
has trouble navigating around it with the JAWS cursor. When You land on
something in frame3 with the JAWS cursor it vanishes. So it is hard to
click on any links here. This is why I thought that the service was
inaccessible. And the cart view, still largely is.
Frame4 changes also and is very graphical. JFW will find nothing there it
can read. Sighted help can't tell when you are focused there either so it is
hard to have them help you with what's there.
Frame5 is also graphical with the same problems. I really wish the peapod
webmaster would study up on alt tags. Maybe if we all send him grumppy
emails en masse.
So we're back to frame1-topframe so let's brows the aisles. You tab over to
Brows the aisles and press enter. Frame1-topframe is the only frame where
tabbing will read you sensible information.
The list of aisles shows up in frame2 so you have to press ctrl-tab to get
there. Once you are there this list is read automatically. You can turn on
the JAWS cursor, and slowly review the list of aisles. You'll find yourself
doing this a lot, navigating to frame2 and slowly reviewing long lists
there. Sometimes you'll be taken directly to frame2 and sometimes not.
Sometimes JFW will do the right thing and restrict the JAWS cursor to frame2
and sometimes it won't. Why this behavior is so inconsistent I have no
idea. If you hear surrounding frames, you'll just have to ignore the
extraneous text which can be very annoying. You can also try navigating
away, with control-tab, then back again to frame2 and that sometimes gets
JFW to restrict the cursor correctly. You also need to wait sometimes until
JFW finishes reading a frame before it restricts the JAWS cursor to review
only that frame. I think this is a bug in their script and I wish HJ would
simply openly acknowledge and publish bug-lists.
The aisle list includes produce, dairy, poultry, meat, ready-to-eat general
grocery and many other aisle names. Pick one and you will get a
sub-cattegory list still in frame2 which is luckily where your JAWS cursor
stays. To pick all these links once you are in frame2 use the JAWS cursor
and not the tab key. If you attempt to tab around frame2 or any of the other
frames for that matter except frame1-top frame, you'll quickly discover that
JFW will read utter nonsense. It will read things like "javascript B25494"
and you will have no clue where you are. Also if you tab you often hear
irrelevant information from the other frames and not what you need to know.
I have a little fantasy about punishing the Peapod webmaster by forcing him
to surf his website with only Lynx for a solid week while in solitary
confinement. Oh well, back to our tutorial.
Once you narrow down from cattegory, to sub-cattegory to even lower level
cattegories, frame2 will finally fill with a list of actual food items.
Since navigating and dealing with these food item lists are always the same,
I'll deal with that in part two of this email.
Now say instead of browsing the aisles, you search for an item instead.
you'd first go to frame1 top frame and select the link that says "search for
a particular item"
Then you'd wait and you'd be placed in frame2. Here's as good a place as any
to mention that you do a lot of waiting with peapod due to all the graphics
your browser has to draw. If you get impatient and start tabbing or
JAWS-cursoring around before it is finished you won't get the venefit of
having JFW automatically read you the newly-redrawn frame2 and JFW also
won't know which frame has your focus. So slurp some coffee after you select
anything in frame1-top frame and wait until JFW starts automatically reading
your newly-changed frame2. If you don't you won't be able to locate
anything.
So you've told it to search. You will after a few seconds or minutes of
screen redrawing, land on an edit box in frame2 which helpfully has no
label. If you tab off it and try to find it again it will vanish or at
least, JFW won't be able to find it again, so don't do that. Instead,
carefully type in a search term and tab once to the button labeled Search.
Press enter.
You wait again, but eventually frame2 fills with a list of stuff, or at
least a list of cattegories. Using your JAWS cursor poke around and click on
what's appropriate to narrow cattegories to an actual list of food items.
For example, if you searched for salad dressing, you will have thirteen
cattegories. Some will be general Salad ressing bottled, and some specific,
S and W Salad Dressing. Put your JAWS cursor on the text for a cattegory,
click once and wait.
So before I describe how to buy something, I want to review this confusing
frame thing. You go to frame1-top frame and pick a link. YOu wait. Stuff
appears and is read to you from frame2. If you interrupt the process too
early JFW won't restrict your JAWS cursor reading to only frame2, so you
gotta wait.
Then you are already in frame2 so don't start tabbing around or JFW will get
lost. Instead switch to your JAWS cursor and slowly read what's there, which
is usually an edit box requesting more ifnromation or a list of stuff you
can select from.
All right, well the next thing to tell you about is how to actually buy
something. I'll write that up as part two of this email.
--Debee
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Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
