[stylist] I had a thought

[Donna Hill]

Hi Friends,
Yes, I woke up with an actual thought this morning. As many of you know,
screen reader users have significant issues with Word Press's comments form
-- usually called "Leave a Reply." I know several blind people who have
WordPress blogs (including our own Nancy Scott's Vision Through Words), and
my own domain is being hosted by WP, so the whole thing disturbs me.
 
I had put up what Word Press calls a custom form one day to see how it would
work. I had it in the wrong place, so it severely messed up the look of my
homepage, but our own Robert Leslie Newman sent me a comment through it. The
problem is that the form doesn't link to WP's automatic comments system. I
can't post it myself, but I wrote to a WP help guy who has shown some
interest in the accessibility issues, and he posted it on Robert's behalf.
 
My idea was to create a page with the form, have it as a link among all of
the normal links and then also put a link to it on any post or page I write.
That way, it will be accessible from a variety of places. I also decided to
put a note about the issue under the heading "Accessibility Issues for
People Using Screen Readers" on my homepage. My mind, which is hopelessly
driven to PR thinks this may not only give  my readers an alternate way to
post comments, but will raise consciousness about the issue. I do stop short
of hoping that it will shame WP into fixing their form, however. Maybe if
all the blind WP bloggers do the same thing and we start flooding their help
desk with comments that they have to post for us, someone will figure out
that it would be cheaper for them to just fix it.
 
Anyway, if any of you would do me the favor of taking a peak and even trying
it out, I'd appreciate it. Starting from the top of the page, it's the 8th
heading at:
DonnaWHill.com/
 
Thanks,
Donna
-- The Heart of Applebutter Hill, a novel on a mission:
DonnaWHill.com
 
Read Donna's articles on Suite 101:
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