W3 Access for Blind People - User's Manual


V1.0

Introduction

'W3 Access for Blind People' is intended to make life easier to blind people when they want to surf on the World-Wide Web (W3). In this manual we assume that you are familiar using a screenreader and working with a W3 browser. If you are not, please consult your manuals. We also assume that you already know how to use W3. (If not, what are you doing right now?)

Configuring your Browser

If it's possible, disable in your browser options like: In the following you have to know the addresses and ports of the proxies. For the moment, you can use our proxy. This may change sometime. As soon as we know about other places, we will add a list to this document.

(If you don't know, what a proxy is, don't worry. It will probably work anyway.)

Configuring Netscape

In the menubar "Options->Preferences...->Proxies" set:
    FTP Proxy: ea.ethz.ch                  Port: 8080      

 Gopher Proxy: ea.ethz.ch                  Port: 8080      

   HTTP Proxy: ea.ethz.ch                  Port: 8080      

Configuring Mosaic

In the menubar "Options->Preferences...->Proxy" set:
      HTTP Proxy Server: ea.ethz.ch:8080            

       FTP Proxy Server: ea.ethz.ch:8080            

    Gopher Proxy Server: ea.ethz.ch:8080            


Configuring WinWeb

In the menubar "Options->Proxy Server..." set:
     Multiple Proxy Server                                    

                     http: ea.ethz.ch:8080             

                      ftp: ea.ethz.ch:8080             

                   gopher: ea.ethz.ch:8080             


After having configured your browser, make sure that your browser's cache is flushed. Otherwise you may receive documents not transformed by the 'W3 Access for Blind People' because they are taken out of your own cache.

Getting started with 'W3 Access for Blind People'

When you load a HTML-document via our proxy-server the document you receive has three parts: The document itself, and additionally a linklist and a hierarchical list of all the titles. The lists give you an overview over the document and allow you to navigate easily through it.

List of Links

After loading a document you can jump to the linklist to have an idea of which links are available. When a link seems to be interesting you can activate it directly from this list.

Let's look at this concept a little closer: At the top of each document you find a link to the linklist. This link is named 'Ref to Linklist'. Activating this link, the top of the linklist will appear at the top of the browser's window. The first entry of this list is not a link but it indicates you how many links there are in the list. Following this you find the document's links. The last link in this list that is named 'Ref to Top' brings you back to the top of the document. The linklist is terminated by the words 'End of linklist'.

The List of Titles

Most HTML-documents have a hierarchical title structure: There are titles of level one (maintitles) containing in most cases titles of level two (subtitles) which may have subtitles of level three and so on. When you load a document you can get a quick overview just by browsing through the titlelist of level one. In fact, the titles in this list are references to the real titles in the text. When you find a title in the list that seems to be interesting you can either jump to the appropriate title in the text or go down the hierarchy to find all titles of level two belonging to this title. If there are more levels you can go on climbing down the hierarchy. You also can climb up again. The titlelist is terminated by the words 'End of titlelist'.

Jumping from the text to the titlelist:

To jump to the first titlelevel just use the 'Ref to title level 1'-link at the top of the document just after 'Ref to Linklist'. Doing this, the number of titles of level one will appear at the top of the browser's window followed by the titlelist. It is a general concept that after each title in the text you find a reference to the appropriate titlelist of all its subtitles.

Navigating in the titlelists:

After a title in the titlelist (which is in fact a reference to the title in the document) you can find a link labelled 'Lower level'. Use this link to jump to the list of subtitles belonging to this title. If there are no more subtitles this reference will not appear in the list. If you are at a lower titlelevel than level one there will also be a link 'Upper level' at the end of the titlelist. Use this link to go up by one level - you jump to the title in the titlelist to which the current titlelist belongs.

Jumping from the titlelists back to the text:

You can directly jump to the text belonging to a title by using the title which is in fact a reference to the appropriate text. At the end of a titlelist you always find the links 'Back to Text' and 'Top of Document'. 'Top of Document' jumps to the top of the document. Using 'Back to Text', the title to which the current titlelist belongs will appear at the top of the window. For example if you are in a titlelist of level two (belonging to the level-one-title "Activities") the title "Activities" will be at the top of the window when you use 'Back to Text'.

Other features

The keywords 'Image', 'Radiobutton', 'Checkbox', 'Editfield', 'Button' and 'Combobox' are printed before the appropriate elements in the text. If your screenreader doesn't identify these non-textual elements you are at least informed that these elements do appear.

Searching

In the text of a document the keyword 'link' is inserted before each link. So you can use some "find"-commands which are provided by your browser or screenreader to browse through the document without using the linklist. Similarly you can use the keywords 'title level' to jump from one title to the next. There are some other keywords that are self-explanatory: 'Image', 'Radiobutton', 'Checkbox', 'Editfield', 'Button' and 'Combobox'. Use these keywords in the "find"-command to see if there are such elements and to jump to these positions.

Summary

When you load a document, a linklist and hierarchical titlelists are added to the document's text. These lists serve you to get an overview over the document. You can also use these lists to navigate quickly through the document and to follow some links. The titlelist has a hierarchical structure (like a tree). You can browse through this structure simply using the links 'Lower level' and 'Upper level'. To return to the text use the links to the titles or the links 'Top' or 'Back'. 'Back' brings you to the position in the document's text from where you can jump to the current titlelist.


Contact:

We would like to hear you suggestions, ideas, opinions and comments on this project. Feel free to send email.

Louis Perrochon, Andrea Kennel
Institut für Informationsysteme
ETH Zentrum
8092 Zürich
+41 1 632 7282
perrochon@acm.org, kennel@inf.ethz.ch


[ CS-Department | Up ]
ETH Zürich: Department of Computer Science
Comments to webmaster@inf.ethz.ch.
June 15, 1995

This page is <http://www.inf.ethz.ch/department/IS/ea/blinds/user_man.html>.