[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.