Introduction
The <http://www.facebook.com/>Facebook website is a constantly
changing environment and the user experience may differ from one
person to another. The content for this lesson was updated as of
January 22, 2014. As Facebook continues to evolve, the information in
this lesson may become out of date. However, some of the concepts
that will be discussed may remain useful for future versions of
Facebook as well as other interactive websites.
Facebook verses Facebook mobile
The information covered in this lesson will be related to using the
main www.facebook.com website. Alternatively, there is a mobile
version of the site that is much more streamlined and contains less
multimedia. It can be found at m.facebook.com. The official Facebook
Accessibility Team recommends screen reader users access the main
Facebook site but many people find that the mobile site is easier to use.
Access keys
The Facebook website provides several access keys that allow you to
jump to specific links from any page. For example, you can press
ALT+1 from any page and your cursor will move directly to the "Home"
link near the top of the page. Press ENTER on this link to navigate
to your Facebook home page where you will find notifications and the
news feed. The following are the access keys available from any page.
* ALT+1 navigates to the "Home" link which when activated moves
to your Facebook home page.
* ALT+2 navigates to the link which will take you to your
timeline. The text of this link is usually your name.
* ALT+8 navigates to the "About" link where you can learn more
about the Facebook company.
* ALT+9 navigates to the "Terms" link where you can read the
Facebook terms and policies.
* ALT+0 navigates to the "Help" link where you can access
Facebook help information.
The News Feed
The beginning of each entry in the news feed is marked with a
heading. Therefore you can simply press H to move to each item
followed by the DOWN arrow if you want to read the text of the entry.
Only a small number of entries appear on the page at first and as you
continue to press H to move down the list, more entries will appear
automatically.
Facebook has several shortcut keys designed to allow you to quickly
navigate and interact with the news feed. In order to use them, you
first have to turn off the JAWS Virtual PC cursor by pressing
INSERT+Z or CAPSLOCK+Z if using JAWS in laptop mode. Press the
command again to turn the Virtual PC cursor back on and resume
navigating with other JAWS commands. The following are the Facebook
shortcut keys that you can use to navigate the news feed when the
Virtual PC cursor is turned off.
* Press J to move to the next item in the news feed, or press K
to move to the previous item.
* Press L to "like" or "unlike" a post.
* Press C to comment on a post.
* Press S to share a post.
When navigating the news feed with the Facebook shortcut keys you
will hear each item but will not be able to review the text. For
example, you will not be able to read the text by character, word, or
by line. You will also not be able to activate any links that may be
in the news feed entry.
If using JAWS 15 or later, you can use the Speech History feature to
review the text of a news feed entry. As you are pressing J to move
to each item and you find an entry that you would like to examine
more closely, press INSERT+SPACEBAR followed by H to activate the
speech history window. The JAWS Results Viewer will open and you will
find the text of the news feed entry at the bottom of the window.
When finished, press ESCAPE to exit the Results Viewer window and
return to the Facebook page.
If you are not using JAWS 15 or later or if you would like to
activate a link in the news feed article, you will need to reactivate
the Virtual PC cursor and then find the news feed entry. Press H
until you find the heading for the entry. You can then scroll down to
the link or to read the text of the item.
Keep in mind that when navigating with the Facebook shortcut keys,
you are not moving the JAWS Virtual PC cursor. This means that when
switching back and forth between the Virtual PC cursor and the
Facebook shortcut keys, your cursors will likely be in two different places.
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