Re: Question out of ignorance

I don't think anyone has statistics on this, but a very common scenario for
blind people is to use Internet Explorer 5 or 5.5 with Jaws for Windows,
Window-Eyes, or another screen reader supporting Microsoft Active
Accessibility.  Also, the next version of HPR will be based on IE5 rather
than Netscape.  These screen readers function somewhat like Lynx, in that
they capture HTML from the browser, usually decolumnize any tables they
find, and in the case of Jaws give you some information about the rows and
columns of a table.  The latest versions of Lynx, by the way, can take a
really simple data table and display its rows in a nice way, which I think
is an improvement for screen reader users.  Lynx will not do this new table
rendering if a table row cannot fit across the current display width, so it
never does a table rendering when tables are being used for layout.  

Hope this helps.

At 03:16 PM 8/28/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I work for a consulting group which offeres a web usability service. Part of
>our service is of course we check to see if a web site is meeting W3C
>standards and whether a text-to-speech reader can navigate the site (sadly
>which i must say always seems to be no). I currently have the lab set-up
>using IBM homepage reader for our text-to-speech test - we also use Bobby,
>test i.e., netscape, opera,  use Lynx, etc. Is the IBM product the most
>representative product for this type of test? Is there a product more people
>use or one that would be a more universal test of what most
>visually-impaired users rely on?
>
>thanks,
>Cassandra Thomas
>Research Associate
>Giga Information Group
>W.Phone 408-327-4337
>Cell 408-505-3887
>Voicemail 408-327-4357
>
>       
>
>
Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service f/t Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress    (202) 707-0535  <lras@loc.gov>
<http://www.loc.gov/nls/>
HOME:  <lras@sprynet.com>   <http://lras.home.sprynet.com

Received on Monday, 28 August 2000 15:47:10 UTC