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Felicity’s reviews of websites regarding accessibility for blind and vision-impaired people.

Hi everyone, my name is Felicity. I have been totally blind since birth, meaning I have no vision whatsoever. Though I do not believe that blindness or having any other disability should prevent you from grabbing any opportunity that comes your way. It should also not stop you from living life to the fullest. The instructions I am writing are specific to the websites I am reviewing.

If you are totally blind, it is better to turn off all options which enables your computer to ask you questions from websites or pop ups. If you have no vision at all you will require assistance to do this. When I am having problems reading over any website, I simply use the up and down arrows until I find a familiar link. If I get really stuck I shut down the site by pressing alt F4 and relooking up for the site. My reviews are for using websites entirely via the keyboard as being totally blind I can not use the computer mouse.

Review of ABC website by Felicity

Welcome to my review of the ABC website and its accessibility for blind and vision impaired people.

One resource that is extremely valuable for finding information for anyone in today’s digital world is the internet. And on this page I plan to review the ABC website and in my personal opinion reveal how accessible this site is for blind and vision impaired users. As a blind person, my way of reading through any website is through using Jaws. This is a speech program which reads everything that is on a computer, for the benefits of people who can not see. When I reviewed this particular website, I found it quite accessible and easy to use for blind people. Though I did find a number of improvements that needed to be made. Overall the website was quite accessible through Jaws.

These are instructions for people searching and using the ABC website through Google Chrome. When first starting to search for a website press control escape and use your up, down, left or right arrows to find where Google Chrome is on your computer. When you have found it press enter and a search bar may be brought up automatically. Though this may not always happen. So it is a good idea to type in control L after you have pressed enter on Google Chrome. This will bring up the search bar. Then, if for example you are looking for the ABC news web site, you need to type in ABC as one word, with no caps. Then it is important to put a space after your search term. After you have completed typing in the search term then press enter. After you have typed in your search term you will need to press the letter N and then H twice as you have not yet reached the site this will take you to your search results that Google has brought up. When you have found the link for the website you want press enter to activate it. Jaws will notify you which parts are actually links and actually text. When the link to bring up the ABC website appears you hit enter on it. When searching for it with Google it is accessible by Jaws. Pressing enter allows you to access and visit the “Skip to main content link” that was able to be accessed by Jaws.

The headings of the text versions of the news stories were able to be accessed and visited by Jaws. The links I had visited allowed Jaws to notify me of this when I read them. When I first arrived on the site, hitting H went to the link labeled “Top stories.” Pressing the letter H also allows you to move between headings using Jaws. When Jaws comes across graphics on this site it will give you a description of what is in each one. The sources for all the news stories are read out with Jaws. Jaws also mentions when the text story also has an audio link.

Though when I tried to play the Youtube version of the story, I was able to get it to play by entering on it, though it was then hard to make the audio stop playing through using the keyboard. I was able to pause it temporarily by using the spacebar. When I went into the ABC site the next time, I accidentally skipped the “Skip to main content” link. I managed to get back to this link, as I personally find that it is the easiest way to get to the main stories. I managed to get back to it by using the up arrows.

Review of The Age Newspaper website for users who are blind or vision Impaired. By Felicity.

I intend to review this website in regard to how accessible it is for blind and vision impaired users. Personally my favorite way of accessing any website is through a speech program known as Jaws. Jaws reads out any information on a computer screen for the benefit of those users who are blind or vision impaired. These are instructions for people searching and using the Age newspaper website through Google Chrome.

In my review of the AGE Newspaper website, I discovered that the links on the main page are readable with Jaws. I also found out that the AGE website has ads. Jaws let me know this by saying “Advertisement” and directly under that text was a link which led to that commercial. When I entered on a link to attempt to read an article, Jaws read me out the title of the article. And also a link with the author’s name beside it. But allowing me to access the article with Jaws, the site came up with a box only giving me the option to save or share the article. I also unfortunately got stuck in an advertisement without really knowing what I was stuck in. All in all I did not really find this a great website for blind people to use