[CEUD-ICT] WebAIM Screen reader survey results

[Mark Magennis]

> I would be a bit nervous in using tools which "summarised"  a web  
> page for
> me.

It would seem to be a difficult thing to do all right. To a great  
extent the ideal summary, or even the ideal presentation order,  
depends on the characteristics of the user and the task they are  
attempting. Difficult to second guess. I'm reminded of Clippy, the  
friendly little paperclip who used to pop up in MS Word with helpful  
suggestions like "I see you're writing a letter, ...". I was NEVER  
writing a letter! Grrrrrr!

In addition to Brookestalk and the work of Esmond Walsh which Dónal  
mentioned, anyone who's interested in trying out some screen reading  
tools that take a customising approach might look at LookOUT and  
WebbIE (www.screenreader.co.uk). I think LookOUT has been replaced by  
Thunder which may take a completely different approach, but when I  
looked at them a few years ago they both produced a highly customised  
view of things.

WebbIE is (or at least was when I looked at it) an application that  
includes Internet Explorer within it but provides a completely  
different user interface. The philosophy is not to give people  
everything, but only what they most need, presented in the easiest  
way. So WebbIE creates a text version of the page which includes most  
of the content and a few other things, such as WebbIE-generated  
section headings. LookOUT is a scripted screen reader that filters the  
user interface, telling you what it thinks you need to know. For  
example, it interrogates a dialog box, picks out various bits of  
information, presents you with that and places you at the control it  
thinks you probably want to use. It comes with scripts written for all  
the standard Windows applications (Word, Excel, etc.).

Might be worth a look.

Mark
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