Gary,
Many thanks for your interesting comments.
The point about hardware emulation is that it is up to the hardware designer
to fulfil the requirements of the user. I suspect you have seen only mouse
emulation. If specific key code combinations are required to access a subset
of sites, or to perform specific commands, this is not a problem to design
into the system. In other words the hardware functionality can be as
specific or generic as is required AND can be tailored to the needs of the
individual user.You may be unaware that it takes only 2-3 minutes to
reprogram a microcontroller with the appropriate commands......
High level software programming is all very well except that there is no
consensus on standards....too much room to do your own thing.....where have
you heard that before, have we not come full circle on this argument?
So far as poor eyesight is concerned.....ever thought of getting  text
reader software to give an auditory prompt when hovering over a link? not at
all beyond someone's wit to program I'm sure.
Good luck!

Richard Taylor MIEE
Shaftesbury Society
Kings MSc. in AT

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gary Derwent" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 11:22 PM
Subject: Re: Web browsers


Well, my quick post on Opera has stirred up a couple of interesting issues:



EA: I hadn’t come across EdWeb before, so thanks for pointing that out. I’ve
had a go with it this weekend. I like it, but I think it probably targets a
different user group than the one I originally had in mind in my earlier
posts. EdWeb seems to be geared to people with extremely limited vision or
possibly no vision at all, and I’m sure it would do a good job in these
circumstances, but in my limited experience of it this weekend, it seems
that you have no choice to look at a website in its ‘normal’ state or toggle
between different types of views, you are stuck with its text-only
interpretation of a given site.



I still think there is a place for magnification, rather than cutting out
all graphics and original layout, or relying predominantly on
text-to-speech. Users with moderate to severe visual deficits can use a
browser like Opera to get a general impression of the layout and design of
the website and then zoom in on selected areas. Switch users can do this
while easily stepping through links until they get to the one they want.
There are also all the different CSS stylesheet options which can be
combined with each other and with magnification.



Richard: Yes, there will always be non-standard web sites out there and
using a hardware solution is a good idea, but I think your assumption that
everyone would prefer to have slower access to a wider range of sites is
wrong. Personally, I think I would prefer quick and easier access to a
limited amount of sites that I use most of the time. In my experience, most
clients aren’t ‘techies’, and this means they don’t want to spend all their
free time surfing the web, they want to use the web as an assistive
technology to help them participate in life as much as possible, doing
shopping for their family, communicating with others, finding out the latest
news, and doing so as quickly and easily as possible to give them more time
for the rest of life. A few key sites can give them quick access to many
vital activities that will enhance their independence. The key point is
choice. It is up to us as EAT professionals to explain the different options
available and the pros and cons of each and let the users decide on what
they want to use the web for and how they want to do it. There is no reason
why each individual user shouldn’t have several different access methods
available to them and use whichever suits their purposes on a given day.



Your idea of hardware mouse emulation also does not take into account the
visual considerations. It’s all very well being able to guide the mouse
pointer round the screen of every single website, but if you can’t see what
you are clicking on, it’s not much good.



By the way, we do use a hardware switch scanning mouse emulator. It was
designed and built by our rehab engineer, and it is very useful for games
and other software where technologies such as DirectX prevent on-screen
scanners such as The Grid or Clicker from displaying. However, it is
certainly not the answer for all users in all situations.



Ian: I agree with you that most web designers target Internet Explorer first
and support other browsers if they can, but I don’t think the problem is as
serious as you seem to think. Web sites are increasingly being designed to
conform with W3C web standards and legislation is starting to come in to
encourage them to do so. For larger commercial sites it is in their
interests to support all the major browsers, never mind what they think of
accessibility or disability, because they know that there is now a
significant user base of non-microsoft browsers and they will lose market
share if they don’t support the other major ones. Go into any bookshop and
you will see evidence of the rapidly increasing interest in technologies
such as XHTML and CSS, both of which are much better implemented in Opera,
Firefox and Netscape than in Internet Explorer, when designing using these
technologies, its easier to implement standard code that works in the
non-microsoft browsers first, and then add in the ‘hacks’ that get round the
Internet Explorer bugs.



However, I think non-standard sites are actually a reason for using Opera
rather than IE. IE relies on CSS tricks for most of the few things it can do
to help visual accessibility, and as you’ve pointed out, there are still
huge amounts of sites not complying with web standards, but the magnifier in
Opera doesn’t care whether a site is CSS or not, or whether it uses nested
tables, it simply magnifies the original intended design, and makes it
easier to step through links in that design, rather than trying to create an
alternative more accessible design on the fly.



If you really want to, or have to, use Internet Explorer then you can
download and install the IE web accessibility toolbar from the AIS team at
Australias National Information and Library Service.  (
http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar/index.html ) This brilliant
(and free) little tool, gives IE many of the useful features of Opera
(easier magnification and CSS enabling/disabling, although still not quite
as easy as Opera) as well as having loads of tools for web designers or
those evaluating other sites. It even offers simulators for various visual
conditions.



Anyway, thats quite enough for now ! Well done to anyone who’s read through
this essay on a Monday morning, better go and get yourself a cup of coffee.

Cheers
Gary

Gary Derwent
Compass Electronic Assistive Technology Service
Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability