On Sep 13, 2006, at 2:35 PM, Alastair Campbell wrote:
Whilst not disagreeing with David, it might help to be aware of
'linearisation' at a more basic level.
When using a screen reader, you effectively have a 1 dimensional
interface, because only one thing can be read out at a time.
dp: this is a theory that spawned the current crop of windows screen
readers. It was not lack of liniar reading that stopped us in the
early days of jaws and NS, it was the lack of an easy and effective
method of moving using direct access to the items and having them
read no matter where they were. I had no problems learning the
layout of a page using the jaws cursor and I also had no problems
finding and reading the column or row I wanted. Yes, we get
information serially. No, when we navigate, we don't need things
liniarized.
A visual interface is (generally) 2 dimensional, because it is presented
in two dimensions, and the person can scan quickly between different
areas.
The way windows based screen readers generally work (especially for web
sites) is to going through the page in source code order. I believe this
applies to most applications and dialogs as well.
VO has taken a slightly different approach. You can simply hit VO-right
and go through everything linearly (in applications). However, when
there are columns of items, you can also go down, giving a kind of 2
dimensional access. Try it in the system preferences, and you should be
able to work out what the grid is like.
Web sites are a tricky aspect of this method, as you could easily get
completely different content ordering depending on whether you go down
or across. You could also miss things, especially in complex forms.
Try a web site you know well that has multiple columns (e.g. the wiki),
and try going though the whole page with down, then start again and use
right.
It might be tricky to help out a friend with JAWs, they are stuck with
the source order ;)
dp: I've not found a web site I can gett directly to columns in. I
should investigate this with "group items in web pages" turned on in
VO prefs Nav.
Kind regards,
-Alastair
