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

[slery]

Pete,

Do you have a web address? This sounds like a great replacement for the
program I currently use, CoffeeCup HTML Editor. It allows me to have access
to all of my tags and attributes without having to memorize them. I am
slowly migrating to using Window-Eyes on my desktop but have to use it
almost exclusively when I use my netbook. The version of CoffeeCup on the
netbook does not work well with WE. It has been a great HTML editor and
program because I can work directly with the code but the program provides
me easy access to a tag library, a built in FTP program that saves all of my
settings for the various sites I work on, and one click/short-cut to open
things in various browsers for testing before uploading.

Cindy S.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nfb-web [mailto:nfb-web-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf 
> Of Peter Donahue
> Sent: Friday, May 03, 2013 12:47 PM
> To: nfb-web at nfbnet.org
> Cc: rob at u-are-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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