[Nfb-web] ALT: A Blind Webmaster's Best Friend

[Peter Donahue]

Hello everyone,

 

                Since January of this year I joined the Alpha Tester Team of
U-R-Able to assist them in the development of their accessibility
enhancement application ALT. ALT is a great time saver and has all ready
proven to streamline the design and maintenance of Web Sites by blind Web
developers. This can be achieved through the development of various Web site
creation text accelerators to generate different Web page templates and to
populate them with various content types. 

 

ALT reduces the time needed by eliminating tedious keystrokes for entering
commonly used page markup such as tags, elements, and attributes, as well as
speeding up the process of generating page templates for various Web
Environments (HTML, HTML5, PHP, XML, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, etc.) The Text
Modules feature permits one to quickly generate different versions of page
templates for various Web environments and allow the quick insertion of
individual tags for page elements complete with specific attributes. It can
also allow one to quickly insert navigation or screen

management controls for ALT accelerators, such as forcing the maximizing of

the view window, using commands simply called Actions.

 

Additional actions can aid in formatting text, adding images, including
various file types and performing a host of other site design and management
tasks. For example the time needed to create paragraph text is greatly
reduce by selecting the text from a source document and using ALT'S HTML
Paragraph macro to insert it on the page wrapped in the HTML paragraph tags.
Once the paragraph text is selected one simply presses the "ALT" key twice
to call up the ALT program and enters "PAR" to launch the paragraph
insertion job. An enhanced version of this macro will also apply class
attributes to allow formatting to be controlled by a cascading stylesheet
when the page is linked to it. If not sure which paragraph macro will apply
CSS class or pseudo class attributes the developer can bring up a list of
alt jobs such as the various HTML macros to find the correct job to perform.
The list is accessed by pressing the shift key plus the tab key to access
the list of alt jobs.  ALT job names are listed along with the shortcut name
so they can be called faster once these shortcuts are memorized. Pressing
"parcss" will cause text for a paragraph on a Web page to be inserted with
the css class name included in the opening paragraph tag. It's that easy.
For that matter another ALT job can allow pages to be linked to one or more
cascading stylesheets with a minimal amount of keystrokes, time, and effort.

 

                Creating your own ALT accelerators is a snap once users
understand the procedures involved. Being able to store a list of favorite
Web sites within ALT and invoke specific parameters when a particular site
is selected is like having your browser's "Favorites" feature on steroids.
In addition to cataloging sites of interest the wizard allows you to specify
particular content areas you visit often, specify the particular Web browser
to be used, and to have particular tasks performed once you open the Web
site.

 

When logging in to a Web site account one must perform the steps of reaching
the login screen, find the form for logging in, entering the account
information and activating the login procedure a task that can take an
unnecessarily large amount of time. By automating such procedures with ALT
this time can be dramatically

reduced from in some cases minutes to seconds. There's no need to remember
umpteen usernames and passwords since ALT stores them as a part of the job
executed when you wish to access various Web site accounts. Additional ALT
jobs can be created for reviewing and searching site content and for
activating controls that can only be used with a mouse.   

 

 

The beauty of ALT is that the shortcut names given to its time-saving
accelerators can be changed to suit the user.  This 

 

reduces the need to remember them as you can give the shortcuts names that
make sense to

you! For example the stock number for an audio or video presentation stored
locally or in the cloud can be assigned as the 

 

shortcut to cause the accelerator for playing or viewing that particular
presentation to be executed. Likewise one could 

 

assign the call letters of their particular radio station to execute an ALT
accelerator to launch that station's audio stream 

 

eliminating the need to launch the stream from the station's Web site,
carrying a loads of CDS or DVDS with you when you travel, and having to
search your local or remote hard drives for commonly played audio or video
presentations.

 

I'm looking forward to continuing this work and creating ways ALT will be

used to improve the accessibility and usability of applications such as blog

engines and content management systems. I have always believed that the best
Web site design applications for blind Webmasters are those we ourselves
develop be they full-fledged applications or enhancing the capabilities of
ALT to give us greater efficiency on-the-job, and to improve our prospects
for employment. ALT truly is a key tool in the blind Web developers' toolbox
of site design and maintenance applications and streamlining access to Web
and cloud-based content.

 

  , Peter Donahue

Anything you can do ALT can help you do it better.