It is interesting that even a lot of sighted folks find a lot of
web designs to be very confusing and cumbersome. I was speaking to a
guy who does a lot of web designs and it was refreshing to hear a
sighted person say a lot of the things about his designs that I like
to hear. He's is in for simplicity and making the company or products
the emphasis and not how the site looks to the browsing person.
Take Care
John Panarese
On Jan 30, 2008, at 4:10 PM, Simon Cavendish wrote:
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]
