[nfbwatlk] FW: ILRU Survey: Assistive Technology forPeople With Disabilities

[Mike Freeman]

Have you tried copying the material including the link to the word processor
and then edited it so that it was all on one humongously long line, then
triggered your browser to open a page, then copied in that humongously long
line and *then* hit ENTER? I haven't tried this with a note-taker but that's
what one does with a computer.

Now I'm going to say something that will probably irritate both you and
Debby: your note-takers -- and yes, my BrailleSensePLUS also -- are just
expensive (because of the Braille displays) PDAs insofar as the world of web
pages is concerned. AS such, you cannot expect every page to be accessible
using said note-takers. Nor can you expect note-takers to all-of-a-sudden
become sophisticated computers. That may seem unjust considering the cost of
note-takers but them's the breaks. You opted to put your money into
refreshable braille displays rather than into computer power.

I know one of our resolutions from 2011 advocated that note-takers become
more sophisticated. I argued against it in the Resolutions Committee and
lost that vote and also that of the NFB convention. So I'd support more
sophisticated note-takers. But reality tells me that it ain't a-gonna
happen.

In other words, in demanding accessibility, we don't have the luxury of
interpreting this as the minimum common donominator. Were this the case,
we'd demand abolishing all graphics, fancy frames, tables and the like. But
just how likely do you think it would be for such demands to be listened to,
let alone met?

BTW, those long links are often generated by machine with long hex numbers
to ensure uniqueness of the link addresses and you're not going to get rid
of them.

And lest you think that we suffer alone, be aware there's no Flash player
for the iPhone. So separate sites designed for access by mobile devices are
often constructed with reduced functionality.

Just one person's rant.

Mike Freeman


-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of debby phillips
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2012 9:40 PM
To: NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nfbwatlk] FW: ILRU Survey: Assistive Technology forPeople With
Disabilities

Mike, for folks who use notetakers, links with multiple lines don't work.
Most really accessible websites have a little mark that indicates a link and
you can just enter en that link.  I don't know about the Braille Sense, or
other notetakers, but I know that the Apex will not work on links with
multiple lines.  
Usually if I want to read something I have to go to Google and search for
the key words.  Google has the link markers and then it's easy to go to a
link.  But many times I just say, forget it.  
Normally you should be able to hit the enter key and go to that link.  When
you do that with links that have lots of stuff around them the Apex
announces that the file is protected.  I could be missing something in terms
of a way to work around this using the Apex, but I don't know of one.  Maybe
somebody who's a techie and has trained folks using the Apex could tell me
if there's a work 
around for this.      Debby

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