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]