[thelist] Disability Accessible Websites

Greg Strange greg at citizenstrange.com
Fri Jul 28 11:28:38 CDT 2000


on 7/28/00 12:22 PM, Dave Olsen at dmolsen at pop900.gsfc.nasa.gov wrote:

> Obviously you're in the same situation as us in NASA. My advice from
> hearing readers speak during demonstrations is to go out and get a
> free text-only browser and (as stupid as this sounds) read it out
> loud (or quietly) to yourself to see if you can make it through your
> site and that everything makes sense. Reading out loud will force you
> to actually read it and not gloss over things. It's a great idea to
> get some real world feedback on it as well. One thing to remember is
> that if you're going to say text that is a link to say "link" before
> reading the text. You don't need the alt tag or whatever to have link
> in it because the reader does it for you. You can download a text
> only browser at:
> 
> Lynx (for Win) --
> http://browsers.evolt.org/?sexy=yes&swinging=yes&dir=lynx/281/32bit/
> MacLynx --
> http://browsers.evolt.org/?sexy=yes&swinging=yes&dir=maclynx/2.7.1/
> Unix -- sorry, you're on your own to find one
> 
> I use MacLynx and it matches up almost exactly to the screen readers
> I've heard (pwbWebSpeak and JAWS).

I got tired of looking for reader software for the Mac and decided to write
one for my own purposes using Text-to-Speech default installation, Internet
Explorer and Applescript.  The result is not bad but it's not a production
applet.  I have only tested it with OS 9.0.4 and IE 5 with Applescript
1.4.3.  It strips out all HTML tags and then returns only the text on the
page and then reads it back to you.

However, if anyone would like it to try you can email me offlist.  The only
advantage this has over reading loud (as someone prudently suggested) is
that it will be read the way a computer reads which is sometimes not what
you are expecting.  Drawbacks: It interprets the dots in web addresses as
ends of sentences so it pauses between www evolt org.  It waits for fifteen
seconds to load a page so if it takes longer, it will fail (but it shouldn't
take longer right? :O))Also, it won't tell you what portion is a link or an
address.  But try closing your eyes and understanding what your page says.
And what is accessible to the reader in terms of text.  I tried it out with
www.loser.com.  Nearly nothing.

Hope this helps someone else.

Greg Strange
-- 
Is a thing morally right or wrong?
Is it advantageous or disadvantageous?
If apparent right and apparent advantage clash,
What is to be the basis for our choice between them?
  -3 questions from Cicero to his son, _De Officiis_





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