[thelist] Re: [css-d] Re: Aural browsers

Simon Dell simondl at epic.co.uk
Tue Feb 26 08:13:01 CST 2002


Hi CSS-D and Evolt peeps

Sorry for the cross post, but I thought this would appeal to both lists.

<preamble>
For the Evolters: this is a reply to a so-far short thread begun by Joe
Kaczmarek asking about aural style sheets and speaking web browsers, the
original question being: "[What] I need to know is which browsers support
and display
(ie. speak them) these [aural style sheet] properties? Anyone know?".
</preamble>

My current project at work is to convert an intranet served training
package that i (fortunately) worked on last year to a more accessible
version of itself. Our client (a civil service) has asked us to make sure
the site works well with a couple of screen readers, which are slightly
different from "speech/aural browsers". There are many more packages
available. These are both really expensive for an individual to buy, so i
don't know how much they're used outside the realms of our client's offices.

Dolphin Supernova is a screen magnifier and reader. When reading a screen,
it will read out to the user the contents of a window, frame, list item in
a left-right, top-bottom order. When viewing web pages, it does the same
thing, ignoring document ordering and aural-style directives that hide the
text. When you lay out a number of columns of text using CSS, they will be
read out as if all the separate columns are just one (very confusing). If
content is laid out in tables (NOOO!!!!! We're trying to get away from
that!!!) then it will read the cells and rows out in a left-right,
top-bottom order. Hidden text is read out as if it were clearly visible.
Alt tags on graphics are read out, and links identified with appropriate
language. It does make navigation through the screen quite easy, with the
use of simple keyboard controls for moving up/down lines, jumping to links etc.

JAWS is also a screen reader, but doesn't do any magnification. When given
a web page, it behaves more like a "speaking browser", in that it reads out
the HTML in document order rather than a strict left-right, top-bottom flow
across the screen. Alt tags are read, links identified and hidden items
remain unspoken. However, I've yet to get it to respond to any of the aural
style sheet information, though this could be because I didn't specifically
include an "aural" media type declaration (if such a thing exists!?).
Navigation between links is fairly straightforward (tab button steps
through them, following tabindex attributes), but it's not easy to return
to different pieces of text once they've been read out or skipped.

Being training packages, our products tend to include a lot of interaction
which is very difficult to integrate with the screen readers because you
can't control which areas of text are read out as a result of interactions
(other than those which take the user to a new page).

Although I'm partially sighted myself, I would consider my computer use to
be similar in style to someone who has full sight. I do not, as a matter of
course, use any other assistive technology than the "PixelTouch" zoom tools
that come with my Matrox g450 graphics card. I was so impressed by these
tools that I bought the same card for my home machine. I'm not really an
expert on these screen readers, but thought I'd pass on the little I've
learned in the past three or four weeks reworking a site with them in mind.

Hope this little bit of info is helpful to people.
Simon




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