Re: Tables and Screen reader question

Steve,

Thanks  for this reply. So the info so far:

table unwrapping for speech:
Windows:
JFW 3.31 + later with IE 5.0
Lynx

Mac:
iCab 2.2 (includes speak whole page option)
MacLynx (includes speak whole page option)

Other:
???

Direct table navigation:
Windows:
JFW 3.7 with IE 5

Mac:
???

Unix:
Emacspeak

-Anyone else have information easily available?

cheers

Charles

just out of interest, what is Word like as a browser in general with
your version of JFW?

cheers

Charles

On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Steven McCaffrey wrote:

  Hello all:

       First, due to the unfortunate terminology, many people think that Narrator is a screen reader comparable to JFW.  Programs that allow blind people to fully interact with the computer are more properly called "screen review" programs.  Narrator is not one of these.
  A screen review program allows the blind user to fully interact with the OS and applications and includes a whole suite of special commands for each application.  They allow the user to at least:
  interact with menus, dialog boxes, forms, combo boxes, radio buttons etc.;
  review the screen by various means, character, word, sentence etc. ;
   allow the user to get attribute/color  information;
  allow the creation and saving of user defined configuration files.
  Narrator is literally just a screen reader because, to my knowledge, it just passively reads the screen and that's it.
       My version of JFW is 3.31 and does not render the voice ouput as described.  I do not even have the option in IE 5.0 to traverse HTML tables properly marked up cell by cell.  Even this ability would not constitute equivalent access because it would be a linear method of access while the table is chosen as a means of info representation precisely to provide non-linear access.
  Why was a tabular display chosen in the first place?  It provides superior access over  a linear list of numbers.
  I should note that I have the access described in the coffee table example if I bring it up in MS Word.  This is just because JFW 3.31 with MS Word (97?) has some special Word table scripts (commands).
  -Steve






  Steve McCaffrey
  Senior Programmer/Analyst
  Information Technology Services
  New York State Department of Education
  (518)-473-3453
  smccaffr@mail.nysed.gov
  Member,
  New York State Workgroup on Accessibility to Information Technology
  Web Design Subcommittee
  http://web.nysed.gov/cio/access/webdesignsubcommittee.html


  >>> Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org> 01/05/01 07:20AM >>>
  Can people please say which screen readers can identify the row and column
  headings for a table cell?

  As far as I am aware, this cannot be done using Lynx (which doesn't preserve
  the required information) and cannot be done using Windows 2000 Narrator.

  I believe it can be done using emacspeak (at any rate, it is possible to go
  up or down the column to find a header at the top or bottom, and left or
  right to find headers at the sides, which is equivalent to what visual
  scanning enables).

  Are there any other possiblities? When I tried with JAWS (I am no expert, and
  I had an old version) I couldn't get the information. I can't get it using
  the built-in speech capability of iCab - that does speak the table cell by
  cell, including the summary. Same for MacLynx.

  Mac IE 5.0 and Netscape 4.7 do not provide speech output options.

  Cheers

  Charles McCN



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
Location: I-cubed, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton VIC 3053, Australia
until 6 January 2001 at:
W3C INRIA, 2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

Received on Friday, 5 January 2001 08:37:57 UTC