Hi James.
The most streightforward way to explain the liniarization imposed on
us by screen readers is that no matter whether you move horrizontally
or vertically, eventually, you are moving liniarly. In system prefs,
and in icon view of files and folders, this is not the case. If you
move vertically up the middle, you stay in the middle. if you move
horrizontally across a row, you stay in the row till you reach the
end.. In other words, when icons are layed out in a grid, you follow
the direction of travel rather than a liniar routt which would imply
one column and one row.
I hope this helps.
On Sep 12, 2006, at 8:31 PM, James Austin wrote:
Hi David et al,
Could someone please explain this linear thing? I'm very confused
what do you eman? Sorry probably seems ike a really dumb question to
seasoned pros like yourselves.
Thanks
James
----- O
PS - Do either of you have any ideas of how to get a bette idea of
the layout of web pages etc even though i can't see it i would still
like to know how it is laid out so that i can hlep my friends who use
jfw.
riginal Message ----- From: "Alastair Campbell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS
X by theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 1:04 AM
Subject: Re: voiceOver in the wild, are you out there?
David Poehlman wrote:
AC: OSX doesn't have full keyboard access without VO).
dp: please explain?
AC: Most of the keyboard commands for Voiceover only work when VO
is on. Things like getting to the status area, and navigating
applications don't work without the VO/keyboard cursor (e.g. F6/
shift-F6 in windows).
Something I would like is for the 'full keyboard access' mode to
include most of the VO commands, just without speech. However, I
may be a market of 1 ;)
dp: I like relative motion and did notice that there are some
places where we move differently depending on the keys we use. I
only wish we had more of that such as on the web orr in airport
setup.
AC: Doesn't it make it more difficult to learn what is where? I'm
not saying it should change, you can get to everything in the same
order with VO-right/left, but it does change things around if you
aren't careful.
I guess it have certain advantages when you know how something is
laid out thought. For example, VO-down twice and then interact gets
you into Safari's content quickly.
dp: can you put the uri in the message?
AC: Sorry, I had but not very recognizably: www.alastairc.ac
I can't replicate exactly what I just mentioned, either I've
changed some settings or my memory is leaving me!
However, try two things:
1. On www.alastairc.ac, get to the first content heading (currently
"WYSIWYG editor spec - allowed HTML", and VO-right. Then you get
the 'posted' line. VO-right again skips over to the 'Site' heading,
which is actually in the second column.
Should people use VO-down when reading on the web in general? It
seems more set up for sighted use in this regard, it must be
confusing otherwise.
2. On the Wiki (www.blindtechs.net/wiki/), when I use VO-down, I go
through the left column twice, then into the content area. It
starts with 'link' (the logo), navigation, search, and toolbox
headings, then you get the sub-sections of each area like 'main
page', Because they are indented slightly they count as another
column.
I can see positive and negatives to this 2D approach, but on
balance I would prefer a code-order approach, as it is fairly easy
to miss things otherwise. (Or at least an option to take that
approach.)
However, it isn't completely grid based, as hidden skip links area
read out is *roughly* the order I would expect from a linear
presentation, which is why I wanted to do some test cases...
Still, it could all change in Leopard, with the 'improved navigation'.
Kind regards,
-Alastair
