How PWD use the Web- improvements

I suggest that Accountant with blindness be redone to bring out more clearly how a blind user  surfs the Web. It refers  to more checkpoints (listed at end). Of course if it is acceptable then it can be  put in the  format as the rest of the personna.
Rewrite of Accountant with blindness:

She uses the speech output, combined with
navigating by headings (3.5)on a page , to quickly orient herself to the contents and its 

structure  for rapid scanning of a document, and has become accustomed to listening to 

speech output at a speed that her co-workers cannot understand at all. She uses
refreshable braille output to check the exact wording of text, since braille enables her to 

read the language on a page more precisely. 
She uses special key combinations of the screen reader that makes it announce the 

title(13.2) of every unfamiliar page that loads. It also reads other information like number 

of links, headings and forms on the page  that helps her determine a navigation strategy. 

She tabs through the links on a page or often uses a feature of the screen reader to   list 

all the links and then uses first letter navigation to quickly   get to the one she needs 

to. She can do this because the targets of every link is terse and clearly identified. 

(13.1)
Much of the information on the Web documents used at her company is in data-tables, which 

can sometimes be difficult for non-visual users to read. However, since
the tables on this company's documents are
marked up clearly with 
column and row headers ( 5.1 and 5.2) and
captions and summaries (5.5)
which her screen reader can access, she easily orients herself to the information in the 

tables. 
Her daily tasks include usinng Web based forms  to enter  journal entries into the company's 

accounting system. She knows what data she needs to enter in each input box as she tabs 

through them as their field labels are read out to her because the labels are explicitly  

associated with the controls. (12.4)
Since the insurance codes she must frequently reference
include a number of abbreviations and acronyms, she finds the
expansions of abbreviations and acronyms
the first time they appear on a page allows her to better catch the meaning of the short 

versions of these terms. (4.2)

As one of the more senior members of the accounting staff, Ms. Laitenen must frequently help 

newer employees with their questions. She has recently upgraded
to a browser that allows better synchronization of the screen display with audio and braille 

rendering of that information.
This enables her to better help her colleagues, since the screen shows her colleagues the 

same part of the document that she is reading with speech or braille
output.

Checkpoint references:
(3.5 Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to 

specification. [Priority 2])
13.2 Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites. [Priority 2] - for 

title element under head for a page
13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link. [Priority 2]
5.1 For data tables, identify row and column headers. [Priority 1]
5.5 Provide summaries for tables. [Priority 3]
12.4 Associate labels explicitly with their controls. [Priority 2]
4.2 Specify the expansion of each abbreviation or acronym in a document where it first occurs. [Priority 3]

Sailesh Panchang
Senior Accessibility Engineer 
Deque Systems,11180  Sunrise Valley Drive, 
4th Floor, Reston VA 20191
Tel: 703-225-0380 Extension 105 
E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com
Fax: 703-225-0387
* Look up <http://www.deque.com> *

Received on Tuesday, 27 April 2004 12:45:22 UTC