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Roberto Gonzalez
ALVA Access Group
Oakland, CA
www.aagi.com
outSPOKEN World1 for Windows 2000 employs a document
methodology as well as exploiting the nuances of braille and
speech in order to provide a more complete interface to a web
page in comparison to a window or line-by-line approach of the
traditional screen reader. As the visible window boundary is less
significant than that of sentence, paragraph and frame
boundaries, outSPOKEN World1 cleverly provides an undemanding
command interface in which the emphasis is placed on content
rather than the physical layout of screen elements. This document
approach to web access allows the blind user to focus more on
information retrieval instead of being mired with inconsequential
characteristics of aesthetics and format.
As an extension to the document tactic, outSPOKEN World1 makes
available a dialog which collects and presents a list of all
links and controls for an entire web page. In this way,
navigating to particular elements on a page can be done more
efficiently, especially when seeking information in a complicated
web document. One option is to set the order criterion in the
list to "Alphabetical". Although no reformatting operation of the
page is done, the user is presented with a list which can be
easily scanned to locate or verify the existence of a particular
link. At a push of a button, the same list can be re-organized to
reflect the actual order of elements as it appears from top to
bottom on the page. Operations within the dialog are offered to
either activate the selected element or bring the focus to the
corresponding location on the page so that hyperlinks can be
quickly followed or information can be read in context with
regards to the selected list item.
Reading and reviewing web content is also document oriented.
When a page is loaded into the browser, it is automatically read
aloud in speech while the braille display is positioned at the
top of the page for the user to begin reading. Commands to read
the current, previous and next sentence are readily available
from the navigation keypad. Moreover, a complete sentence is
presented when reading by sentence even if the information is not
explicitly shown on the screen. Entering a frame or table is
announced in speech and indicated in braille. Navigation between
frames and within a table is simplified with a convenient set of
familiar commands.
Identifying hyperlinks is independently handled in speech and
braille when navigating with built-in keyboard commands or with
navigation methods provided by outSPOKEN World1. A special
attribute voice is used in speech while a bracketing system is
applied in braille in order to identify links. A similar
technique is used to indicate the presence of controls such as
buttons, edit boxes and Java elements.
Providing a concise and all-purpose command set as well as
medium-specific representation in speech and braille improves the
efficiency for the blind web user when accessing web content.
outSPOKEN World1 minimizes the complexity of accessing web
documents by reducing command set complexity as well as
standardizing a navigation review interface.
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