Dear Greg,
I am very much in agreement with what you have said about the layout
of the webpages and the relevant content which a blind user is often
desperate to gain access to without having to spend minutes - and I
mean long minutes - of trailing through various unrelated links. This
is sadly a message which is not getting through to website designers
as we know them But since you are a very aware person, we can rely on
you. Thanks for that!
I've just visited the website for which you are seeking feedback from
us. I like its simplicity. The only thing I am not sure about is this:
I choose to navigate website by groups. When I use vo + right arrow to
move through a website, I hear text spoken which is relevant to a
particular gorup. Some of these groups are just text, others however
contain links which I might want to explore further. There's no way of
knowing at the moment which group contains links and which group
contains just text. This is a minor problem for a brief website like www.cucat.org
but it becomes more of a chore for a big website because it is not
until you interact with the group that you find out whether it
contains links or not.
Greg, I am not a programmer although goodness me I wish I had studied
it when I was younger and made choices - but as a lay person, I'm not
sure whether it is possible for Voiceover to announce whether a group
contains a link or not. It would certainly speed up the reading if it
could announce that. I know that you can group all the links together
with vo + U but when you land on a large website which you just want
to scan, it would make it so much faster to know whether a particular
group contains links or not. Also, the link choosing menu may not
always trigger your memory as to which link and in what context you
might have been interested in.
Greg, this is not in any way a criticism. Gosh, it must be difficult
enough to do what you have done. I'm just throwing things in to see
what is possible.
With my best wishes
Simon Cavendish
On 30 Jan 2008, at 20:19, Greg Kearney wrote:
I have been designing and programming the webpages of Curtin
University Centre for Accessible Technology (www.cucat.org) and it
doing so have collected a few thoughts about accessible web pages.
Along with as the usual things like alt tags and high contrast of
type. It occurred to me from my own use and that of my blind wife
that many pages require the screen reader, and sighted users as
well, to navigate through a whole range of site navigation links
before ever getting to the content of the site.
In the CUCAT site I have attempted to deal with this by placing the
navigation links at the bottom of the page so that when you land on
a page you reach that pages content. In the event of a very long
page where the navigation would be at the bottom I will have a
single link which will take the reader to the navigation links.
It would seem to me that this approach would be better for pages
intended to be read by screen readers, as well as by the sighted
rather than have all the visual and auditory distraction of complex
headers at the top of the page to navigate through before reaching
the true content of the page.
Also I feel the content of the page read in an uninterrupted flow
without breaking to offer other services or information.
As a general design rule I feel that webpages have become much to
complex and busy. This applies to the sighted as well as the blind.
Would you want a book in which the text flashed, moved or in some
other way animated the pages? Would you want a book in which bight
coloured text, unrelated to what you were reading littered the sides
of the main content area? The answer is, no, of course not but that
is often what we are getting from modern website design. There seems
to be of late the approach the because we can do something on a page
we should.
Just some thoughts to think about.
Greg Kearney
535 S. Jackson St.
Casper, Wyoming 82601
307-224-4022
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
