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

Fri May 3 20:36:26 UTC 2013

Rob Nevin will also be doing Q&A at the Travel & Tourism meeting on July 2 between 1-4:30 pm at the National Convention.

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Affiliated as an independent contractor with Montrose TravelCST - #1018299-10 FL CST T156780Your old car keys can be the keys to literacy for a blind child.  Donate your unwanted vehicle to us by clicking https://nfb.org/vehicledonations or call 855-659-9314.Echevarria Travel has partnered with Braille Smith. http://www.braillesmith.com for all her braille needs.Gail Smith is the Secretary of the NFB of Alabama

> From: pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com
> To: nfb-web at nfbnet.org
> Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 12:42:44 -0500
> CC: rob at u-r-able.com
> Subject: [Nfb-web] Alt: A Blind Webmaster's Best Friend
> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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