Navigating The Forum With Orca in Ubuntu with Firefox 3.0

[GraysonPeddie]

Hi. I am running Ubuntu 8.10 under VirtualBox virtual machine and I'm starting to get around with browsing the web site with Firefox, but one of my problems in here is when it comes to browsing the forum. For example, when I hit the "h" key to get to the first heading (which I assume to be the first category of the forum) within a table, nothing happens as if there's no headings in the forum. I thought I could use a paragraph tag to mark it as a paragraph just to see if this forum supports it.

To those running Linux with Orca screen reader, what are some of the techniques you use to navigate this forum? For my first time experience using Orca to browse the forum with Firefox, I used to navigate the forum for jumping through unvisited links in order to get to the forum I want to go to. In the meantime, I use a mouse for navigating through a forum, but I can browse to other non-forum websites just fine, but that depends on how accessible they are. For example, live.gnome.com/orca (Orca - GNOME Live!) is accessible. To get to the heading, I press "h." To get to the paragraph, I press "p," and so on and so forth.

It seems like I need to learn how to navigate through the table heading and table body, but that kind of post belongs in a different forum (although I'm better off posting this kind of question in the Ubuntu's Assistive Technology forum). If this thread belongs in the technology forum, then that's no a problem for me, but I thought this thread should belong in here for those who might find it useful if they have trouble navigating through the forum.

Thanks,

Grayson Peddie

PS: As I've previewed my post, the UBBCode for the forum does not support the paragraph tag, so it looks like I'm not able to jump back and forward through paragraphs. If the developers at VBulletine implements a paragraph tag in UBBCode, this could speed up the navigation through the thread within the forum, but only if posts within the thread uses paragraph tags. The current version number of the forum software is 3.7.3 and I don't know if the later version of the software supports the paragraph tag.

PPS: By the way, I forgot to mention that Orca is a screen reader/magnifier for Linux.

 

[naisho]

It will be hard to implement a method similar to what you're used to on AD here, because I'm sure as you are aware, the coding is completely based off vB's (vbulletin) initial templates.

As you already knew, this version of VB is at release 3.7, which was released sometime in 2008. I think the latest candidate is in the 3.8 series, but as far as content surfing goes, to my knowledge the user interface is still exactly the same, there's just some minor bugfixes and modifications.

If you're interested in seeing what they were doing while twiddling their thumbs , a list of 3.7 -> 3.8 transition changes are available here:
3.8 on vbulletin.com - vBulletin Community Forum

But to be honest, to describe the problem here, although I can see where you are coming from and understand that you aren't having the surfing experience that you desire.. Checking to see about resolving the problem on AD is kind of like a dead end street!

The only way to have this issue properly addressed to Jelsoft's attention is by registering and posting this comment on their forums to add or suggest an implementation for future versions or hopefully have a developer write a modification hacking script to get it implemented.

Are you speaking of the headings as in the header of html?
I've never used Orca, but to shed some light on vB's methods the default coding of the header section is done like this; possibly the reason why you can't find the headings you were searching for.

<!-- logo -->
<a name="top"></a>
<table border="0" width="$stylevar[outertablewidth]" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center">
<tr>
    <td align="$stylevar[left]"><a href="$vboptions[forumhome].php$session[sessionurl_q]"><img src="$stylevar[titleimage]" border="0" alt="$vboptions[bbtitle]" /></a></td>
    <td align="$stylevar[right]" id="header_right_cell">
        <if condition="$ad_location['ad_header_logo']">$ad_location[ad_header_logo]<else />&nbsp;</if>
    </td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- /logo -->

<!-- content table -->
$spacer_open

$_phpinclude_output

$ad_location[ad_header_end]

From what I see, it basically calls for the AD logo, session information, and that's really it.
The headinclude and footer sections are in depth with the actual code, but for the sake of simplicity I think it's best if I don't post them here unless desired.


I have no experience with screen magnification or reading software — but from initial observations, that from the rest of our posters that are visually-impaired, a majority are on the 9x/XP/Vista OS using Zoomtext or some software to that extent, or some third party braille translation that is still on the same OS.

This is just a guess, but perhaps between Zoomtext and Orca, there are some universal methods of browsing that share a common boundary between the two?

 

[GraysonPeddie]

Well, there are some users who use JAWS (Freedom Scientific), too, under Windows.

But thanks for letting me know, though.

 

[GraysonPeddie]

Okay, I am able to figure out how to navigate the vBulletin forum.

In order to get to the forum index, list of threads within a forum, or when posting to a thread, you typically have to press "t" about 3 or 4 times just to get to the advertisement. After that, you can't get to the next table by just hitting the "t" key again. Instead, press the down arrow key in your keyboard to get off the nested table. This is a problem when it comes to browsing a web page that have nested tables, like this vBulletin forum.

What I mean is this:

"Table within a table within a table."

I'd very gladly want to see vBulletin use CSS for placement instead of a table for layout and just use table for representing dataset only.

This makes it a lot easier for those who are blind to browse the forum (those who cannot see the screen). Unfortunately, that's up to vBulletin to redesign the template to use CSS for the layout of the forum.