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Re: web development tool for screen reader user?

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 11, 2012 7:12AM

Hi Andrew

I did not word that accurately, nor entirely fairly. I should have
said the Design View was "fairly useless", and I felt quite a bit let
down by spending $300 on Dreamweaver because its accessibility for
screen reader users had been highly touted (at least that had been my
perception, either based on this list or some web pages I researched
at the time), as one of its strongest assets, which is something I
simply can't agree with.
I wouldn't want people that want a simple software suite to write web
pages to go out and buy DreamWeaver based on a perception that it is
an accessible and easy-to-use editor that hardly requires any
knowledge of HTML, for instance (I found no way other than writing the
actual HTML by hand to create tables).
The original email souned like that person was looking for an
easy-to-use rather than powerful tool, so my assessment was based on
that.

However, if you do want a powerful HTML writing and Javascript debugging tool
that can be used somewhat accessibly, once you have picked up its menu
structure and nuances, Dreamweaver is a tool to look into.
I certainly never do, nor intend to, belittle the good work Adobe's
Accessibility team does on a daily basis, rather to prevent a user
from having unrealistic expectation of what a tool with a significant
price tag can do for you, from a screen reader user perspective.

Thanks
-Birkir


On 5/11/12, Andrew Kirkpatrick < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> 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
>
>