Screen readers - WasRE: [thelist] HTML Tables for layout..

Alastair Murdoch alastair at mtbtuned.freeserve.co.uk
Tue May 8 17:05:31 CDT 2001


Try: IBM homepage reader, CAST screen reader and WeMedia talking browser.
These are all low end/free versions with demos available.  The make a
reasonable job of reading pages (in my opinion as a non visually impaired
user).

ibm : http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hpr.html
cast : www.cast.org
weMedia : www.wemedia.com or
http://browsers.evolt.org/index.cfm/dir/talking_browser/win32/1.2/

you might also want to check the bobby checker, www.cast.org/bobby

Of all of the above, the wemedia browser made the most sense, as it allowed
the links of the site to be navigated separately (mental note, never use
'click here' as a link) although it's interesting to note that thier own
site doesn't fare to well IMHO.

 From my (albeit brief) experiments with these, I'd have to say that there's
as much work to be done on speech browsers as there is on making sites
accessible.  Then again, my opinions come from being able to read the text
as well as listen.

Try this.  Install the ibm homepage reader.  then turn off the monitor and
try to follow the tutorial. bloody difficult to remember where you are in
the tutorial, never mind a site.  then get annoyed that it reads every menu
item, every time it starts the page ( a real dog on site with several links
on one page).  Or that you get 'stuck' navigating the browser options when
you want to navigate the page. and so on...

This experience really opened my eyes (no pun) to what it's like to navigate
without your vision, and it was difficult even on a simple site that I had
designed.


I've now added all of the above to my browser checklist.

cheers
alastair

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A l a s t a i r   M u r d o c h
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-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Joshua OIson
Sent: 08 May 2001 23:14
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: Re: [thelist] HTML Tables for layout rather than strictly for
data presentaion


I should be installing 2000 in a week or so.  But until then, are there any
other screen readers that have any appreciable amount of use?

thanks.
-joshua






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