Dear AccessWorld Editor,
Reading Janet Ingber's November article, AccessWorld's 2013 Online Shopping Guide: It's Time for Holiday Shopping, inspired me to share some of my online shopping tips with fellow AccessWorld readers.
Below are a few tips that help me shop more successfully online, and I hope others will find them helpful as well.
- Some sites, like Walmart, don't have a "Shopping Cart" button. But there's a link near the top of the page with a number in parenthesis. That turns out to be the link to go to your cart, and the parenthesized digits are the number of items it contains. It's worth spending some time carefully exploring, opening links in new windows or tabs if you don't want to lose your place.
- Make sure to try different views for displaying items. Many sites offer list and grid views, and sometimes one is easier to navigate than the other. Some views show only graphics, while others show longer descriptions of items.
- Don't forget about your screen reader's lesser-used navigation keys. For example, in JAWS, the "D" key jumps you to the next different element, the "S" key to the next same element, the "G" key to the next graphic, and the "I" key to the next list item. Even if you find a page has no headings, regions, or useful frames, and even if all the form fields are irrelevant to what you're trying to do, these lesser-used keys are often just what you need to quickly peruse choices. I like to have a site display the largest list, say 100 items on a single page, then attempt to traverse that list using these various keys. Usually, I find one that works best.
- Try the mobile version of a site. Optimized for smaller screens, you'll often find greater accessibility in its less complex layout.
- Go window shopping, or should I say "Windows" shopping. If you wait until the week before someone's birthday, the experience of struggling with an inaccessible site can be stressful. Six months before your deadline, exploring a new site becomes a joyful adventure.
- Learn to use your screen reader's configuration abilities. In JAWS, for example, there are six different ways to identify a button. JAWS can give you its title, associated screen text, its value, or its alt attribute. It can also choose the longest of these elements and there's even a custom setting. On one site I frequently use, changing this setting to read the associated screen text, rather than the title or longest element works best.
- Try a different browser. With NVDA, Firefox often works much better than Internet Explorer. I've even had sites that work best with Chrome.
- Lastly, if your screen reader has OCR features, try maximizing the screen and checking out what they can see.
Deborah Armstrong
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
I just read the November article by Larry Lewis, Seeing Eye GPS: Three Organizations, One Stellar Effort!, and I am wondering if it is possible to get the Seeing Eye GPS app in the UK?
Thanks,
Jeff Clark
Response from AccessWorld Author Larry Lewis:
Hello Jeff,
The Seeing Eye GPS app is only available in the US at this time.
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
As always, Deborah Kendrick has done a masterful job for Access World in her November article, Dr. Abraham Nemeth: The Louis Braille of Mathematics Dies at Age 94. This eulogy is touching and meaningful and I hope will serve as enticement to all Access World readers to devour Ms. Kendrick's forthcoming biography of Dr. Nemeth.
Well done!
Dave Thomas
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
I read the November article by Larry Lewis, Seeing Eye GPS: Three Organizations, One Stellar Effort! I am glad that the author is having such success with Seeing Eye GPS. However, I have not had such success. When asking for directions on how to create routes and how to dictate commands such as a specific destination to Seeing Eye, I get no response from the lists I am on or from the main developer's site.
I would love to have a tutorial that covers:
- Where is that dictation button?
- How to set up a route using dictation or from entering data.
- How to virtually review a route before traveling it.
- How to save a route and recall it.
I bought the three-year subscription and really haven't been able to get it to work well yet. When visiting my son in Austin, TX, Seeing Eye could not find the airport I was in, or anything I asked the app to find by entering [ … ] addresses of places to eat [that] I knew existed close by.
I want to end by saying, I look forward to using this app, and I am sure it does have awesome features to use. However, so far, I have not found a good tutorial.
Thanks,
Dan Thompson
Dear AccessWorld Editor,
I wish to comment on The World of Audio Games: A Crash Course, by Aaron Preece, which appeared in the November issue. I have played audio games off and on for several years. I think these types of games are really great, both in terms of sound quality and plot, or lack thereof, as is the case with some of them. I've mainly stuck to the freebies up to this point, but I have also played some of the audio game demos that are currently available. I recently registered for an account on the Audio Games website mentioned in this article. I can't agree more with the author. Not only is their site an excellent starting point at which to begin learning about everything that's available, but the site is also very easy to navigate for screen reader users. I'm assuming it's easy to navigate for low-vision users as well, based on posts made in the forums. In addition, it's always great to get international perspectives on things and this site does a good job with that.
Sincerely,
Jake Joehl
