RE: [WSG] Articles/reasearch/experience of screen readers

[Matthew Hodgson]

When I worked at the National Library we had Vision Australia (used to be the Blind Society) look at the new Libraries Australia website.   You can pay for them to go through a site and they’ll tell you and show you whether it can be used by visually impaired people. It is a real eye opener to see what they do and how they use a site.   In the end, we learned the following lessons about vision impaired users and screen readers:   a)       Only a completely blind person used the screen reader. Most people with a visual impairment will use a screen magnifier – that brings a completely different perspective to things. They only see a small piece of the website at a time. It’d be like looking at a screen only through a magnifying glass.   b)       Consistency of layout is important. If you have a 3 column layout, use it throughout the site. They will get an expectation of component x to be in the same place for every page. If it is not they will have a hard time trying to find it.   c)       Keep it standards compliant and make sure the (x)html code validates (if you get this right then it’s easier to get the accessibility right)   d)       Make sure that the flow of narrative through the document makes sense if you take the css away. Use headings to differentiate between menus and content   e)       Make sure that when images are content they are in the document. Otherwise, use css to make them part of the design.   f)         Adding tab order through your menus is helpful.   g)       Forms are trickiest. We found it best to make sure that the words came first and then the action. Many people are tempted, for example, to put the checkbox first and then the words next.   [ ] Male [ ] Female   They wanted to see it this way:   Male [ ] Female [ ]   This also had more sense for the blind person with the screen reader. It read the text before saying there was a checkbox. Same thing for search. Use the word search, then the text field, then the button.   Then there was the things about using labels for forms, table/column headers and captions. All these things make it easier for the screen reader, but not for screen magnifiers.   Hope this is of some help   M       ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************