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Re: Question about Screen Readers

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From: Joel Sanda
Date: Aug 14, 2001 2:32PM

Michael;
Great question! I'm sighted and have hearing and have used JAWS quite a bit
to test the accessibility of our products ... so maybe I can shed some light
on this.
Properly coded web pages will have their content, and some mark-up necessary
for meaning, read aloud by JAWS.
Certain elements, like anchor tags, images, list items, and so on will have
a preface read before them. So the following code:
<a href="http://www.home.com"><img src="home.gif" alt=""></a>
Will be read aloud as "image, anchor tag: home.com". I may have the exact
wording off a little, but that's the crux of it. On the other hand, coding
the same feature this way:
<a href="http://www.home.com" title="Go to Home.com's Home Page"><img
src="home.gif" alt="Picture of a House"></a> can be read as:
"link, Go to Home dot com's Home Page". Image: Picture of a House".
As for Lynx - you're on the right track. I often use Lynx to test sites with
style sheets turned off and to "see" what the blind will "hear", since the
alt attribute is displayed in Lynx.
Let me ask you this, in turn: how often do you encounter multi-media
presentations that have text transcripts or closed captioning?
As for training, have you hit the resources at: www.w3.org/wai? That's free
and there are some really good (the best, IMHO) learning resources there.
Joel