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Re: web development tool for screen reader user?

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: May 11, 2012 6:45AM

Birkir,

I think "fairly useless" is a little harsh. It is true that the design view (what I assume you are referring to as the main code editor) doesn't have its own Document Object Model and therefore when you navigate the page content that assistive technologies are not able to voice the type of structures that you encounter. As you point out, this information is available via the code view, the split view (where you can ctrl+tab to jump between the design and code areas and quickly determine element type and attribute information), and also in the properties panel (ctrl+F3 jumps you to the properties panel, ctrl+f3 brings you back).

In short, I'm not disagreeing entirely with you, you raise a valid point about an improvement that would be quite useful. However, I maintain that Dreamweaver is a very useful tool for web developers whether they are sighted and mouse-using, or blind, or only able to navigate via the keyboard.

AWK

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:06 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] web development tool for screen reader user?

DreamWeaver is fairly useless when it comes to the main code editor.
I mean useless in the sense that Jaws at least (and Adobe seems to indicate Dreamweaver is most accessible with Jaws), does not indicate any formatting of text, such as lists, headers, links or anything else. It all just looks like plain text in the editor window, with absolutely on indocation that one is special format.
If i use it, I have to go into code view to see what tags I am using exactly, and often correct things like list tags there. So the design view of DreamWeaver ends up being really just a fancy word processor with a spell checker.
For the price tag, DreamWeaver does not do anything special for accessibility that a free text editor can't do as well.
For debugging Javascript and more complex things, Dreamweaver can be very useful, but I have used Visual Studio, since I am fortunate enough to have it.
The only thing that I have found which might be promising (I have to explore it more myself) is accessible Wordpress (I can repost the page that includes accessibility settings for Wordpress, but I posted it a few weeks ago on a different thread).
I believe for someone who is not into coding, but wants to create his/her own web page, this might be the way to go about it.

Cheers
-B

On 5/11/12, Bryan Garaventa < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> Personally I use BX from
> http://dlee.org
> and EdSharp from
> http://empowermentzone.com/EdSharp.htm
> That's about it really. Plus the system calculator sometimes for fine
> tuning
>
> percentages.
>
> I've found that code generator applications often introduce so many
> accessibility issues and unnecessary filler code that must be manually
> edited, that it's far simpler to just write the code and save the time.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "James Bailey" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 2:05 PM
> Subject: [WebAIM] web development tool for screen reader user?
>
>
>> I'm looking for recommendations for a web development tool for use
>> by a person who is blind and a screen-reader user. The person would
>> like to create web sites independently.
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>>
>> James
>>
>> --
>>
>> James Bailey M.S.
>> Adaptive Tech Coordinator
>> University of Oregon
>>
>>
>> >> >> list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>>
>
> > > list messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
>