[macvoiceover] Re: Designing web pages for screen readers

Greg.
This has been my complaint for many years now.
As you point out, it's not difficult to build a web page that is accessible to the blind, and usable by those who aren't. Yahoo.com for example is completely out of hand. I refuse to use *any* yahoo services, whether it be mailing lists or email accounts, because it's just so flippin difficult to get to anything on that main page, and their search results are buried so deep in the page, it's a minor miracle if you can find them in less than 3 or 4 minutes of navigating nonsense that has nothing to do with what you want. Amazon is even worse, and all of my attempts to bring this to the attention of the webmasters have failed miserably. 90% of the webmasters just don't care, and of those few who do, it's more than likely they're using some tool to do the page generation, and couldn't modify the generated source if their life depended on it. This is what the state of affairs has dropped to in the last few years, and I for one have given up even trying to educate webmasters on the best (or indeed, on any) approach to web design, there's no point to it, because even if you can find one that's willing to listen, unless they're handled by a competent web designer, it's likely you'll spend more time teaching html than you will explaining page layout tips. 
I stick to those sites that work for me, and ignore the rest.
I generally (if the feedback link is findable) will happily email a site that lost a sale though because aI want them to know how bad page design is driving away sales. 
It generally has no affect, but I keep doing it anyhow.
Hoping that perhaps someday somebody will sit up and take notice.

On Jan 30, 2008, at 2:19 PM, Greg Kearney wrote:
I have been designing and programming the webpages of Curtin University Centre for Accessible Technology (www.cucat.org) and it doing so have collected a few thoughts about accessible web pages.
Along with as the usual things like alt tags and high contrast of type. It occurred to me from my own use and that of my blind wife that many pages require the screen reader, and sighted users as well, to navigate through a whole range of site navigation links before ever getting to the content of the site.
In the CUCAT site I have attempted to deal with this by placing the navigation links at the bottom of the page so that when you land on a page you reach that pages content. In the event of a very long page where the navigation would be at the bottom I will have a single link which will take the reader to the navigation links.
It would seem to me that this approach would be better for pages intended to be read by screen readers, as well as by the sighted rather than have all the visual and auditory distraction of complex headers at the top of the page to navigate through before reaching the true content of the page.
Also I feel the content of the page read in an uninterrupted flow without breaking to offer other services or information.
As a general design rule I feel that webpages have become much to complex and busy. This applies to the sighted as well as the blind. Would you want a book in which the text flashed, moved or in some other way animated the pages? Would you want a book in which bight coloured text, unrelated to what you were reading littered the sides of the main content area? The answer is, no, of course not but that is often what we are getting from modern website design. There seems to be of late the approach the because we can do something on a page we should. 

Just some thoughts to think about.


Greg Kearney
535 S. Jackson St.
Casper, Wyoming 82601
307-224-4022
gkearney@xxxxxxxxx



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