RE: divs and screen readers

In general, yes, though Lynx does display tables visually, to some degree,
so it's not the clearest way to see the linearized reading order. 

The clearest and fastest way that I know of is to use the Opera browser, and
to toggle between author and user mode, with styles and tables turned off.
You'll have to customize the user mode to turn off tables, but once you do,
you can toggle between views with a click of the mouse (or keyboard).

Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu 


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of Matthew Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 5:14 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: divs and screen readers



Paul Bohman wrote:
> Here is a simple rule of thumb to follow:
> 
> Screen readers always read the text in the literal order that it 
> appears in the code.
> 
> With stylesheets, you can rearrange the visual order all you want 
> without changing the order in the code, but it is the order of the 
> text in the code that matters to screen readers. Just pretend that all 
> of your HTML tags are gone (<p>, <div>, <span>, <table>, <td>, etc.). 
> What you're left with is the linearized reading order that screen 
> readers pay attention to.

I'd been wondering about that.  Does this mean that if I view the page 
in Lynx, I'll get it pretty much as the screen reader would?

Cheers

M

-- 
Matthew Smith
Kadina Business Consultancy
South Australia
http://www.kbc.net.au

Received on Thursday, 10 July 2003 19:41:22 UTC