RE: Can't see selection highlights

When I was in Microsoft's Accessibility & Disabilities Group, Marc Sutton, a
summer intern, wrote a cool program that used Active Accessibility to
provide a large focus box around the item with focus. It also provided
simple speech output using software Text-To-Speech. It was great for
Internet Explorer. I'm not sure what was ever done with that program.
Perhaps if people asked nicely, they would release this as a "power toy"
type application. Something like this also wouldn't be hard to write from
scratch. Perhaps when I have some time on my hands I'll put something
together.

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Leonard R. Kasday [mailto:kasday@acm.org]
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 1999 11:21 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Can't see selection highlights


The major browsers, Navigator, Explorer, Opera, allow you to tab through
links.  This is crucial for people who have difficulty with a mouse.

You can see where you are clearly with Opera but it's hard to see for
Navigator and Explorer, even for people with average vision.  So a person
who doesn't have access to Opera, e.g. at a public library, is out of luck.

Is there a way to make the highlight easier to see?

Putting windows in high contrast mode helps sometimes, but not always.  For
example, at least in black on white mode, it doesn't work with the blue
bordered buttons at

http://www.research.temple.edu/

Also, this mode loses colors and magifies the text.

Lynx is also superb in this respect... but not usable of course with the
many pages that faill to follow accessibility guidelines.

Len
-------
Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
Universal Design Engineer, Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
Adjunct Professor, Electrical Engineering
Temple University

Ritter Hall Annex, Room 423, Philadelphia, PA 19122
kasday@acm.org        
(215} 204-2247 (voice)
(800) 750-7428 (TTY)

Received on Thursday, 22 July 1999 12:30:51 UTC