"Going In Blind Doesn't Help": Cues For Navigation

GraysonPeddie

GraysonPeddie

Eye/Hear/Speech Impaired
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Hi everyone! I found some information when it comes to those who are sightless (blind -- those who can't see) and when it comes to major issues with accessing websites such as weather.com.

Here's the PDF (Portable Document Format):
http://www.xeroday.com/portfolio/UPA2004_paper_final.pdf

When I went into weather.com, I was having trouble getting to the temperature part without using a screen. There are a bunch of tables everywhere! Even with just one row and one column! I was trying to jump through headings within a page and with too many headings and tables (even heading level 5!) -- ugh(!), I had to look at the screen just to get an hour-by-hour forecast. Hitting the "t" key for table does not take me there! I had to press the down arrow key just to get out of the mess of nested tables.

Anyway, the screen reader I use to browse through the Internet using my netbook and virtual machine is called Orca (Orca - GNOME Live!). Anybody who is interested in trying out Orca can download Ubuntu from Ubuntu.com, which came with Orca. Orca is free for Linux (Ubuntu, openSUSE, Slackware, etc.) compared to JAWS (Freedom Scientific - JAWS for Windows Screen Reading Software) for Windows. If you don't want to dual-boot, you can use VirtualBox (VirtualBox).

By the way, I thought I'd start a thread in here, since it's related to the challenge of how the websites are designed.
 
Perhaps, it's because tables are easier to use when incorporating PHP and SQL.

I learned in my web development class that it's easier to to incorporate PHP and SQL when using tables. I can put tables anywhere on the screen and label them as "Box 1", "Box 2", "Box 3", etc... then assign values to them when the page is loaded.
 
In general, web designers should take a look at this: WAI Guidelines and Techniques

You can put a lot of eye-candy into a website as much as you want, but you've got to take into consideration when making your website accessible for the blind.
 
W3C works very well with the screen reader.

But if you're referring to eye-candy: If you do put a lot of eyecandy (I'm talking about the ones with slicky borders, glossy-looking buttons, shadows under text, etc.) into a website while making your website accessible at the same time, then yes, it should work. Just make sure you take the guidelines into consideration.
 
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