Surfing without a mouse
As part of my TLC 331 Multimedia and Accessibility class, I have to spend a week using my computer without a mouse. This bites. Using Windows isn't too bad I suppose, I took screenshots of all the keyboard shortcut screens in Windows help, made them into one image and set it as my background. Then I hid my desktop icons and added the dektop shortcuts menu to my taskbar. I can do everything I normally do in about the same amount of time.
But anything I do outside of the windows OS is a pain in the ass. For instance, I use Mozilla Firebird to browse the web, and I can't use the multitab function of the browser. It's probably just me being dumb, but I can't figure out how to change between the tabs once they're open. Oh there it is Ctrl+Tab, thank god! Finally!
Once I get to the web the frustration really begins. It should be so easy for designers to make their sites easy to browse without a mouse (ie I'm blind), but the more I browse the more I find that this hasn't been done. My daily web browsing has gone down to near zero. The easiest way I've found to navigate the web is to use the bookmarks I already have. Ctrl+b to open the list, then I just scrolldown and choose.
But once I get to a site that I frequently visit with both a mouse and a keyboard, i find in virtually inaccessible. If only the designers would change the tab orders to help a brother out, but no. At one of the sites I started going to last week I can't even get to the site navigation menu, it's not a tab-able item! It's a pain in the ass to try and use amazon, don't get me started. Posting this hasn't been too bad, though I do have to tab through every link in the side menu before I get to the page's form items.
But anything I do outside of the windows OS is a pain in the ass. For instance, I use Mozilla Firebird to browse the web, and I can't use the multitab function of the browser. It's probably just me being dumb, but I can't figure out how to change between the tabs once they're open. Oh there it is Ctrl+Tab, thank god! Finally!
Once I get to the web the frustration really begins. It should be so easy for designers to make their sites easy to browse without a mouse (ie I'm blind), but the more I browse the more I find that this hasn't been done. My daily web browsing has gone down to near zero. The easiest way I've found to navigate the web is to use the bookmarks I already have. Ctrl+b to open the list, then I just scrolldown and choose.
But once I get to a site that I frequently visit with both a mouse and a keyboard, i find in virtually inaccessible. If only the designers would change the tab orders to help a brother out, but no. At one of the sites I started going to last week I can't even get to the site navigation menu, it's not a tab-able item! It's a pain in the ass to try and use amazon, don't get me started. Posting this hasn't been too bad, though I do have to tab through every link in the side menu before I get to the page's form items.