> Karen Lewellen wrote:
* Sam wrote
# Joerg wrote
> mail is not my problem,
> not sure where sam got that,
* With Arachne, mail would be a problem for you
* when accessing the messages in the normal
* display mode which is graphical. There is
* a work-around. =========== snip ===========
> however, there are sites where
> i need to visit for professional
> chat, www.delphi.com,
> and some websites that nettamer, nor
> linx can reach.
* The problem with the chat websites that you can go to
* on the web is that most of them provide only a graphics
* display and interface. Except for BBSs, I don't know of
* any chat rooms that you can get into that provide an ascii
* interface.
> that is why i want to try arachne, or something esle.
> that may let me do this.
> i am told that arachne cannot reach
> secured sites, my other major need,
> but if i can solve one problem i would be happy.
> thanks,
> karen l
We have been talking about this for a while now and to me it becomes
clear that Arachne is of little help to Karen.
She can handle mail better with other programs than Arachne.
> (Mail is not my problem)
The chatting problem can't be solved if chat rooms don't make
allowance for visual disabeled people... the only thing we can
do is poking with PLEASE... real text PLEASE... there are people who
want to join the party but can't see all these nice looking graphics.
Many of us would welcome the day Arachne can handle secured sites,
but she cann't... at this very moment.
=================
Interesting suggestions have been forwarded to the list to 'improve'
Arachne for visual disabeled persons or to others....
In my opinion we should not stop thinking although this would not
help Karen now.
* Please check out the program appended below. (snipped)
* I sure hope someome might find it helpful.
* All the best, Sam Heywood
* Hello Karen, Bastiaan, and Clarence:
* I don't think her screen reader would be able to deal with the graphics
* buttons displayed in Arachne where you have to click on "reply", "forward"
* "move", and "trash". Nor could her screen reader read the message
* listings as displayed in HTML. She would not me able to see the
* graphics ikons for "get mail", or "compose message", etc. Her screen
* reader cannot read graphic ikons and buttons. When working from a
* command-line interface, or when working from some kind of DOS program
* offering an ascii type interface such as Net-Tamer she seems to have no
* problems.
* It would be theoretically possible for her to use some special equipment
* that would enable her to click on ikons and graphics buttons. She could
* use a keypad-cursor and a menu-pad to substitute for a mouse. The keypad
* cursor has a magnetic pickup coil that knows where it is on the menu-pad.
======= snip ======
* I have several years of working experience with keypad cursors and
* menu-pads. I used this kind of technology when I used to work in digital
* mapping for the United States Geological Survey. It never ocurred to me
* at the time that this kind of technology could find some great usefulness
* among visually-impared computer operators. Doubtless the idea surely has
* already ocurred to the nerd community, and there probably has already
* been some highly sophisticated developments along such lines. Sam Heywood
Does this mean that buttons and ikons have to be at a fixed place on the
screen? Some of them are, eg. press F10, but not always. The buttons in the
right toolbar are not. Also "reply to" is not always present (the bug).
Maybe we could make the buttons and ikons to sound if touched by the cursor.
Eg. "get mail" could sound the PC-speaker "GM" in morse code or something like
that.
Or extra hotkeys like "LM1" => give List Mail item 1... giving enter should
send To, FROM, SUBJECT, etc to the screen, printerport, read bar or
whatever added apliance is installed.
I recently used the POP.log and SMTP.log and found a complete list (pure
ASCII) of the mail... all the TO and FROM stuff plus the text of each mes-
sage... can we do something with that?
(This was quite helpfull in detecting faults in installation of new ISP)
# Joerg wrote:
# Perhaps there is that simple solution. Browsing a little bit through
# the simtel MS-DOS collection i found an archive called horndrv2.zip,
# which included a device driver, which is able to speak via built in
# speaker and is accessed like a file system, for example:
# echo hallo>$talk$ says hallo through the speaker.
# The driver seems to be very buggy and crashed my system every time
# I tested this thing and the speech doesn't sound good but perhaps a
# clever programmer can fix this (source codes are included).
# If somebody is interested in this: Go to http://www.simtelnet.net and
# search the DOS collection for horndrv2.zip.
# Regards Joerg
Did go to simtelnet and searched the DOS collection and found horndrv2.zip
but how to download this? Yes, I still am a newby but there was no download
button whats however...? What to do?
All Arachne buttons and ikons are HTML, are they?
If so they could activate such a program like Joerg told us about and
tell us what button or ikon is touched. Perhaps we can do something about
the sound quality... that's not our main concern... we will *hear* the
buttons and ikons. Morse, speech or music... we will hear them and that's
what matters.
All of this could be theoretically build into Arachne and make Arachne
better usable to the visual impaired... but this will not be of any help
in visiting sites... perhaps only if the provider issues an "ALT" to
the images, an ALT that can be made audible.
Bastiaan
-- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client
-- Arachne V1.61, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
