Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
I go past the nav bar with the skip to content page links. I use the same page inks a lot. Now, O don't code all of this stuff on my site although I probably should to make it easier for a jaws user, or any other user to navigate it. -Original Message- From: jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com [mailto:jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com] On Behalf Of Deborah Armstrong Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 4:07 PM To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Subject: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing 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
Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
Be *very* specific in your search terms. That should whittle down the number of results. Use the JAWS Find command more often. 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]
Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
You're certainly not the only one who finds web surfing to be a challenge these days. Sometimes you can cut through the clutter with judicious use of the Find command. For instance, I often only wish to read the product reviews on Amazon.com without scrolling through the rest of the garbage on the page. So I type see all my reviews or just see all my into the Find dialog, and jump right to the first review. When I finish reading it, I hit F3 to jump to the next review and so on. On comparison shopping web sites like Bizrate and Pricegrabber, I type $ into the Find dialog to quickly scroll through all the bottom-line results. When I find the lowest price for a product, I can scroll up a few lines to find the merchant that's selling it. The trick is to find a recurring phrase or character combination that you can pop into the Find dialog to make it easier to skip over the extraneous content you're not interested in. This technique does not always work, of course, but it serves me well most of the time. - Original Message - From: Deborah Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 5:06 PM Subject: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing 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
Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
Hi, I understand your frustration. To help clean-up the screen make sure that Inline frames are turned off, and maybe turn off flash content. More restrictive searches really can also help. I also find that a links list can speed up your web navigation especially with sites containing hundreds of links. My few words of help may not add very much, but I am on the same page with you. Roger - Original Message - From: Deborah Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:06 PM Subject: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing 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
Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
I agree with this tip about using control F. Works good when you do google searches as well. Just copy something they have as part of the description right below the search result if it is what your looking for and it'll get you right to the most relevant info. Other than that, I use the page down button either once or twice, depending on what webpage I'm on, and then peruse down by using the p key that moves you by paragraph. That usually works in helping me find things fairly quickly and navigating past the junk links. I always look for landmarks on pages that can help me get my barings the next time I'm on the website. A combo box on a webpage might be completely irrelevant to you until you realize its one paragraph away from where text usually is shown. Then you realize that if you Hit the letter C and then P, (combo box and paragraph keys respectively), then you can get to where your going much faster. Like I siad, some of these strategies become pretty intuitive because despite the clutter, many webpages have very similar clutter patterns and you just begin to get a feel for what clutter is typically where, or what the clutter you find means in terms of the page as a whole. Its hard to describe or explain aside from calling it intuition. Be patient with yourself, you will get the hang of it. Kate Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 19:25:25 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing You're certainly not the only one who finds web surfing to be a challenge these days. Sometimes you can cut through the clutter with judicious use of the Find command. For instance, I often only wish to read the product reviews on Amazon.com without scrolling through the rest of the garbage on the page. So I type see all my reviews or just see all my into the Find dialog, and jump right to the first review. When I finish reading it, I hit F3 to jump to the next review and so on. On comparison shopping web sites like Bizrate and Pricegrabber, I type $ into the Find dialog to quickly scroll through all the bottom-line results. When I find the lowest price for a product, I can scroll up a few lines to find the merchant that's selling it. The trick is to find a recurring phrase or character combination that you can pop into the Find dialog to make it easier to skip over the extraneous content you're not interested in. This technique does not always work, of course, but it serves me well most of the time.- Original Message - From: Deborah Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 5:06 PM Subject: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing 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
Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
Hi, could you tell me how to turn off flash? I like to have it for websites like youtube but I have to say it can become somewhat of a nuisence otherwise. I'd like to know how to control it better. Thanks, Kate From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 16:36:54 -0800 Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing Hi, I understand your frustration. To help clean-up the screen make sure that Inline frames are turned off, and maybe turn off flash content. More restrictive searches really can also help. I also find that a links list can speed up your web navigation especially with sites containing hundreds of links. My few words of help may not add very much, but I am on the same page with you. Roger - Original Message - From: Deborah Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 2:06 PM Subject: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing 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
Re: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing
I think everyone here has had these difficulties from time to time. Especially on websites they are not familiar with or when they are not sure of exact words to search for on the page. Additionally, I would urge people to send feedback to web developers that create pages with a lot of clutter and no structure. I wish I knew a good resource or guidelines to direct the developer to provide constructive, consistent suggestions. Does anyone know of simple guidelines out there? Perhaps this is not easy, since most web developers are trying to create something unique and creative to attract visitors. By the way, I applaud Amazon. I think their site now has much better structure than it used to have. For instance on their product description pages, they now use headings, like H1 for the beginning of that item. Still not perfect, but better. Don Marang - Original Message - From: Deborah Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 5:06 PM Subject: [JAWS-Users] Beyond Surf's Up: Need tips for advanced real-worldsurfing 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
