Using Free Voice Browsers to Evaluate Web Sites

January 28, 2010

Topic: Using Free Voice Browsers to Evaluate the Accessibility of Web Sites
Speaker: Wendy Chisholm, Technology Research Consultant, DO-IT
Date: Thursday, January 28, 2009
Time: 11:30a.m. - 1:00p.m.
Location: Allen Auditorium

Wendy Chisholm demonstrated the use of two free voice browsers, WebAnywhere (http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/wa.php) and NVDA (http://www.nvda-project.org/) to evaluate the accessibility of Web sites.

• NVDA
  • Non Visual Desktop Access (http://www.nvda-project.org/)
    • Documentation is at http://www.nvda-project.org/wiki/Documentation
  • Runs on Windows
  • Free to download
  • Using FireFox 3, has support of ARIA
    • On sites that use ARIA, Firefox and NVDA can communicate on what is on the page
    • ARIA - Accessible Rich Interface Application (http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/aria)
      • Useful when using Javascript to define roles
      • By using ARIA in setting up a Javascript-based menu, can have standard interaction practice (moving around in menus with arrow keys, leaving menu with ESC, etc.).
  • NVDA is in active development
    • ARIA features are comparable to those in JAWS and WindowEyes
  • Users have many different techniques for using a voice browser on a page
    • Can configure NVDA to set how much information it should give you about each element you visit (clickable, etc.)
      • Useful to get maximum information when you are developer, but may want less info when just browsing
    • At any time a user can hear the headings on a page; each time you press H you go to the next heading
      • Page developers can negate the headings feature; often headings are created just visually, not as h-elements, so not recognizable as headings
    • Can jump down through lists on a page; press L to go to next list
    • For sighted users (such as people with dyslexia) using mouse, NVDA speaks elements as the user mouseovers them
    • Text must be in markup to be read; NVDA cannot read text in graphics
  • Reads ALT tags on graphics
  • Does not seem to have a way to highlight element that currently has focus
  • Can select among various voices for the voice synthesizer
• WebAnywhere
  • Located at http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/wa.php
    • Can be used from anywhere you have a Internet connection to view most sites
    • WebAnywhere is a proxy; your connection to a site is routed through WebAnywhere, processed, and the result passed to your browser
    • WebAnywhere can't do Flash, yet
    • WebAnywhere can only communicate with what the browser gives it through the DOM
  • Wendy is working on the team continuing to develop WebAnywhere
    • Feature set is fairly simple
    • No ARIA support yet
  • Designed to make it very obvious where you are on a page
    • Creates high contrast, large font experience
    • Very nice for demonstrating to people what is happening when a person is browsing a Web page with a voice browser
  • Most of the WebAnywhere features are in NVDA, but NVDA has many more features
• General Discussion
  • On search fields that offer multiple scoped searches, why do we always put radio buttons for selecting which search below the search field; to use it you select which search and then put text in the search field, but the code is in the opposite sequence
  • Enough people are using headings within their Web pages that it is becoming a common way to navigate people using screen readers navigate pages
    • Most Web design is based on Graphical User Interface (GUI); we do not have a Audio User Interface (AUI) set of concepts articulated yet (We need a grad student to pull together a AUI)
  • NVDA is rapidly gaining popularity; the hope is that people will use NVDA use it instead of JAWS, which is expensive.
  • VoiceOver on Apple stuff
    • VoiceOver on the iPhone is very good, one of the best AUIs out there; http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision.html
    • VoiceOver on Macs is also very good; http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/
• New Toolbar
  • E.A. Draffan invites us to try the JISC TechDis Toolbar; http://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ToolBar/
  • Available as a downloaded app or as a temporary toolbar you can load anytime by going to a URL
  • Speaks with a Scottish accent