[bcab] Re: Links on web pages and screen readers

Hi, RNIB are increasingly using styled word documents for exactly this reason. 
The way screen readers work with them does not make them as easy to use as a 
web page yet in terms of navigation, so I don't particularly like them for 
delivering information yet, but they do allow information to be manipulated 
easily.  In fact even these save to relatively good web pages now. This is just 
one example of how people can author in different ways but it can still be 
usable. Style sheets have become progressively more important over the years, 
and there may well be a time in the medium term when they are regarded as one 
of the most important things to understand for many authoring/creative jobs. I 
am sure screen readers will continue to improve their support for these as they 
have the internet and one day we will navigate word documents as we now do the 
internet as standard.  The important thing for us to get our heads around here 
is that there will be many ways of creating what I will call a source file, and 
many ways that a good source file can then be transformed and manipulated 
easily. In the end, how we decide to view something on our own machines will 
probably bear less and less resemblance to how the files or pages were 
produced. This will give us much more control over what we see or hear and that 
is a good thing. For instance, one can already browse the internet to an extent 
with Kurzweil 1000. I would not be surprised if their support for the internet 
improves radically, making it a realistic proposition as a default web browser, 
with built in Daisy making and braille translation. Add to that the ability to 
select a capture graphic or other part of a page and ask it to OCR it, and we 
have something extremely powerful indeed. With this in mind, screen readers 
adding OCR abilities in competition may well become a reality. Might Jaws and 
Open Book end up as one product?

Cheers
Dave



From: George Bell 
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 9:09 PM
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Subject: [bcab] Re: Links on web pages and screen readers


Hi Gordon,

Let me try to put this issue on very, very simple terms - and probably be shot 
down my the experts in the process.

If a document or web page is written properly, it will use what are called 
"Styles".

Even if it does not officially use Styles in terms of what is called a "Style 
Sheet", it will have a default Style used for normal text.

So again in simple terms, our XML document should have a normal paragraph style 
for it's main text.  We will call this a "p" style.

But it also will have Headings, like a main heading and sub-headings.  We will 
call these "h1" and "h2", etc..

So how do we know what font size these p, h1 and h2 Styles have?

So in comes this thing called a "Style Sheet", otherwise know as a .css file.

The web designer says that his web page defines these styles in his Style Sheet 
as follows.

h1 = 40 Point Ariel font, coloured black.
h2 = 20 Point Ariel font, coloured green.
P = 10 point Times New Roman Font, black.

Which frankly with the print sizes would put the proverbial whatnots off a 
partially sighted, large print reader.

So, the idea is that YOU, young Gordon Keen, can keep a LOCAL .css file on his 
system.  And that overrides whatever the web designer of the page you are 
looking at says.

So your personal Style Sheet might say, for example:

h1 = 20 point white on black bold
h2 = 18 point while on black bold
p = 18 point white on black

And if a range of 18-20 point means you can now comfortably read the web page - 
you have won.

And yet let's look ahead when (I hope not, but) you may need larger font, you 
only have to make changes to one file, and all your viewed web pages will 
change to the size you want.

If anyone is actually still with me here, you will hopefully have seen the 
implications of XML in terms of, for example, braille production.  A web page 
Style can therefore be matched to a braille style.

But go further with alternative media.  Automatic conversion to speech, for 
example.  Headings can be emphasised because we know they are Headings and not 
normal text.  They can be indexed for sound, again because they are properly 
styled.

And do you know the irony of it all?

Properly styled documents actually save work in the regular work place!

For example, you can create a Table of Contents on Word in literally seconds.  
(And I've lost count of how many former university students have told me they 
wished they'd known how to produce a Table of Contents when they were producing 
their thesis!)

I'll go back and crawl under my stone now.

George W F Bell, Managing Director
Techno-Vision Systems Ltd
76 Bunting Road Ind. Est.
NORTHAMPTON, NN2 6EE
Tel: 01604 792777
Fax: 01604 792726
e-mail:  george@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.techno-vision.co.uk 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bcab-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of 
Gordon Keen
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 8:00 PM
To: bcab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bcab] Re: Links on web pages and screen readers


Dear girl, you are too kind as usual, 


So it takes some degree of commitment on behalf of the web designer to set up 
the CSS html web page. well if past performance is  anything to go on - it 
ain't going to happen then.   Anything that requires any effort on the part of 
the author is going to be binned straight away, time is money after all.


So how does XTML differ, why would some nurdy web designer be more comfortable 
in XTML rather than HTML using CSS?


Sorry, being a typical poor old man who is having difficulty understanding the 
problems.


Regards,




G




From glorious Devon, England.

(Where the Sun always shines and all the children are above average.) 
On 22 Feb 2008, at 18:32, Léonie Watson wrote:


      Senior moment? Never! You're quite right. CSS can bring a lot of benefits 
to web design. Of course, it can be done badly, like anything else, but used in 
the right way it can help considerably.

      You can use it to present content in different ways for different people. 
It can make the ability to choose between different colour schemes much easier. 
It also gives rise to the possibility of overriding the website's default 
styles with something completely personal.

  Regards,




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