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Thread: Discussion for assistive technology users.
Number of posts in this thread: 10 (In chronological order)
From: Sachin Pavitran
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 9:07AM
Subject: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Hello everybody, my name is Sachin Pavithran. I am a JAWS user and a
assistive technology specialist at WEBAIM. I would like to start a
discussion on this forum for people who uses assistive technology. I know a
lot of the topics that are discussed on this forum is very technical in
nature, if there is any topic that user of assistive technology would like
to discuss or bring up to the table please feel free to do that. This also
could be for programmers who would like to get a users prospective in
various developmental aspects.
I believe this could be a key source for us to address various issues which
has not been thought of before.
Sincerely,
******************************************************
Sachin Dev Pavithran
Training and Development Specialist
Center for Persons with Disabilities
6800 Old Main Hill,
Logan, Ut - 84322
U.S.A.
Work Phone : 1-(435)-797 0974
Email : = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Visit Us at http://www.cpd.usu.edu
******************************************************
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From: FOX, Jake
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 9:21AM
Subject: Re: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Just a quick question, did you pay the full
From: Paul Bohman
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 10:05AM
Subject: Re: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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If you don't need a screen reader for daily use (e.g. if you aren't
blind), and if you only want to use the program for testing purposes,
then consider using the JAWS trial version. There is no real expiration
date (though I have heard from some people that it eventually expires,
after about a year or so), so you can use it indefinitely. The catch is
that you can only use it for about 40 minutes at a time. After the 40
minutes, you have to reboot the computer in order to make JAWS work
again. It's free this way, and 40 minutes is usually adequate for most
testing purposes.
You can download JAWS at
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws.asp
FOX, Jake wrote:
> Just a quick question, did you pay the full
From: Richard Sweet
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 2:33PM
Subject: RE: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Hi all
The trial version of JAWS does eventually expire (mine did very recently),
I'd guess after around six months. But it's very useful for testing.
I'd be interested in any discussion about the practical side of using
assistive technology; I work at a college where we have many students who
use all sorts of equipment/software, and as the college is currently big on
'E-resources' I'm trying to make sure as much as possible is accessible to
all our students.
Just don't get me started on our VLE :-0
So, tell me: does JAWS or any other screenreader convert 'smilies' like that
actually say 'Smiley exclaimation'? I guess one could do it manually by
putting them in the dictionary, but it would be a nice touch for it to do it
automatically!
Richard
> If you don't need a screen reader for daily use (e.g. if you aren't
> blind), and if you only want to use the program for testing purposes,
> then consider using the JAWS trial version. There is no real
> expiration
> date (though I have heard from some people that it eventually
> expires,
> after about a year or so), so you can use it indefinitely.
> The catch is
> that you can only use it for about 40 minutes at a time. After the 40
> minutes, you have to reboot the computer in order to make JAWS work
> again. It's free this way, and 40 minutes is usually adequate
> for most
> testing purposes.
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From: Sachin Pavitran
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 2:54PM
Subject: Re: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Hello Richard, I am not aware of any screen reading software that converts
expressive symbols into vocal output. That would definitely be a nice
feature to have. As far as I know, the only way to do something like that is
by going into the dictionary configuration in the JAWS configuration
manager and manually putting in what you want JAWS to vocalize for a certain
symbol or character or word.
******************************************************
Sachin Dev Pavithran
Training and Development Specialist
Center for Persons with Disabilities
6800 Old Main Hill,
Logan, Ut - 84322
U.S.A.
Work Phone : 1-(435)-797 0974
Email : = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Visit Us at http://www.cpd.usu.edu
******************************************************
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Sweet" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 2:25 PM
Subject: RE: Discussion for assistive technology users.
> Hi all
>
> The trial version of JAWS does eventually expire (mine did very recently),
> I'd guess after around six months. But it's very useful for testing.
>
> I'd be interested in any discussion about the practical side of using
> assistive technology; I work at a college where we have many students who
> use all sorts of equipment/software, and as the college is currently big
on
> 'E-resources' I'm trying to make sure as much as possible is accessible to
> all our students.
>
> Just don't get me started on our VLE :-0
>
> So, tell me: does JAWS or any other screenreader convert 'smilies' like
that
> actually say 'Smiley exclaimation'? I guess one could do it manually by
> putting them in the dictionary, but it would be a nice touch for it to do
it
> automatically!
>
> Richard
>
>
> > If you don't need a screen reader for daily use (e.g. if you aren't
> > blind), and if you only want to use the program for testing purposes,
> > then consider using the JAWS trial version. There is no real
> > expiration
> > date (though I have heard from some people that it eventually
> > expires,
> > after about a year or so), so you can use it indefinitely.
> > The catch is
> > that you can only use it for about 40 minutes at a time. After the 40
> > minutes, you have to reboot the computer in order to make JAWS work
> > again. It's free this way, and 40 minutes is usually adequate
> > for most
> > testing purposes.
>
>
>
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> visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
>
>
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From: Wayne Dick
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 8:57PM
Subject: Re: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Hi All,
Next semester I'll be teaching computers and society to a group of majors.
I've decided to make about 1/3 of the course address accessibility.
I've been thinking of interesting projects. One is to turn a group loose
with Jaws on some new piece of software. The catch is that they must turn
the screen off when they use Jaws. We've got a couple of copies in our
computer labs. So, they'll be able to practice. Is this a reasonable
project? What can I do to make it tractible. Is there a particularly good
software application to use? Should I use an accessible one, a partially
accessible one, one that is inaccessible or a combination?
Any Ideas?
Wayne
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From: chris
Date: Thu, Jan 08 2004 9:40PM
Subject: RE: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Unless your university website is perfectly accessible, I would have them
assess your university website and pass the information along to your web
team... Stacking functions!
-chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Dick [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 7:48 PM
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: Re: Discussion for assistive technology users.
Hi All,
Next semester I'll be teaching computers and society to a group of majors.
I've decided to make about 1/3 of the course address accessibility.
I've been thinking of interesting projects. One is to turn a group loose
with Jaws on some new piece of software. The catch is that they must turn
the screen off when they use Jaws. We've got a couple of copies in our
computer labs. So, they'll be able to practice. Is this a reasonable
project? What can I do to make it tractible. Is there a particularly good
software application to use? Should I use an accessible one, a partially
accessible one, one that is inaccessible or a combination?
Any Ideas?
Wayne
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From: Richard Sweet
Date: Fri, Jan 09 2004 10:16AM
Subject: RE: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Depends on how much time you have for the exercise. I would suggest getting
them to do things they would do on a regular basis themselves: look for a
piece of information on a popular website, write and read emails, maybe do a
simple bit of word processing (including formatting text!). If you're doing
this at the start of the semester, go (at first anyway) for things that ARE
accessible; when they realise how difficult this is, then you can explain
how much more difficult it is when resources/software are not designed
properly!
Richard
> Hi All,
>
> Next semester I'll be teaching computers and society to a
> group of majors. I've decided to make about 1/3 of the course
> address accessibility.
>
> I've been thinking of interesting projects. One is to turn a
> group loose with Jaws on some new piece of software. The
> catch is that they must turn the screen off when they use
> Jaws. We've got a couple of copies in our computer labs.
> So, they'll be able to practice. Is this a reasonable
> project? What can I do to make it tractible. Is there a
> particularly
From: Randy Pearson
Date: Fri, Jan 23 2004 7:49AM
Subject: RE: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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When browsing the web, does JAWS work with a specific browser, or does it
simply read the screen that results from any browser? What I'm really
looking for is whether our server application, when reading the "user-agent"
string from the header, can tell that the response is targeted to a
screen-reader.
Separately, on the topic of emoticon-equivalents, such as smileys, we're
wondering what would get the attention of various assistive technologies.
Lets say you had message board software that parsed for occurrences of
strings like ":-)" and could decorate the HTML as it was rendered. Would it
be of any value to decorate this like so:
<span title="smiley face">:-)</span>
Alternatively, a parser could swap in a matching emoticon image, and use the
ALT text--probably a superior approach for various tyles of users.
-- Randy
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From: James Gagnier TBC
Date: Fri, Jan 23 2004 9:15AM
Subject: Re: Discussion for assistive technology users.
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Hello Randy:
Jaws users for the most part use Internet Explorer as their browser of
choice. This is due to the functionality that FS has provided for IE. All
applications that are accessed by Jaws depend greatly on scripts to operate
properly. While a user can use Netscape with JFW, it's functionality is not
as good due to the scripts that are provided. JFW scripts do everything
from providing special keystrokes such as insert f7 for a link list to
identifying the code behind a web page such as a heading or a list. Jaws
would be practically unusable if it's associated application scripts were
not present. This makes Jaws a powerful tool as scripts can be developed
for most applications but at the same time, this makes Jaws quite
application specific unless the user can write his own scripts for
non-standard apps. I don't believe your servers will be able to determine
if your application is accessed with Jaws as someone accessing your page
with JFW is using IE and that is the results you will get from the
"user-agent" string from the header.
James
----- Original Message -----
From: "Randy Pearson" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 9:41 AM
Subject: RE: Discussion for assistive technology users.
When browsing the web, does JAWS work with a specific browser, or does it
simply read the screen that results from any browser? What I'm really
looking for is whether our server application, when reading the "user-agent"
string from the header, can tell that the response is targeted to a
screen-reader.
Separately, on the topic of emoticon-equivalents, such as smileys, we're
wondering what would get the attention of various assistive technologies.
Lets say you had message board software that parsed for occurrences of
strings like ":-)" and could decorate the HTML as it was rendered. Would it
be of any value to decorate this like so:
<span title="smiley face">:-)</span>
Alternatively, a parser could swap in a matching emoticon image, and use the
ALT text--probably a superior approach for various tyles of users.
-- Randy
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visit http://www.webaim.org/discussion/
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