- From: <apiner@onebox.com>
- Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 19:01:16 +0200
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
excerpt taken from http://wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,45306,00.html While many users find pop-ups to be simply annoying, there are some for whom pop-up ads cause even more serious headaches. Jim Allen, webmaster and statewide technical support specialist for the Texas School of the Blind and Visually Impaired, said these programs make a big difference for the people he works with. He's been suggesting Pop-Up Stopper to his blind Web surfers who use screen-reading software. The problem is that when a pop-up ad comes up, the screen reader jumps to it and starts reading that instead. "You don’t have a back button because there’s nothing to go back to and sometimes they don’t have a close button either, so (blind users) have to get reoriented to where they are," Allen said. "It’s analogous to watching a TV and someone else is playing with the remote control. Suddenly you don’t know where you are and you have to wrestle with them to get control back to what you were watching." "We’ve had e-mails from attention deficit disorder and visually impaired people who haven’t been able to use the Web recently and say that with our Ad Subtract software they can now go back online," interMute's English said. Allen and others who work with the blind are creating a set of guidelines in association with the World Wide Web Consortium, which may offer a feature to stop pop-up advertising. They’ve received input from companies including Microsoft and hope these guidelines will be implemented on the browser end. - -- Alex Piner apiner@onebox.com - email (310) 309-3500 x2941 - voicemail/fax __________________________________________________ FREE voicemail, email, and fax...all in one place. Sign Up Now! http://www.onebox.com
Received on Saturday, 21 July 2001 13:01:45 UTC