If that is what you were trying to say, then why
are you disagreeing with me? Having a page be shown as a sighted person
sees it isn't the important factor when working with sighted people. it's
knowing how a page is organized so that when a sighted person says, the
link is on the right, the blind person will know that on the right means the
bloc of links he/she sees at the bottom of the page. This link can be
found with the find command just as easily either way and other navigation on
the page may be easier. Calling this the dom debate isn't accurate either
because it implies that the dom is responsible for reorganization. The dom
doesn't require reorganization. Reorganization is done by screen-readers
by design, because it makes navigation easier in most contexts. But the
dom doesn't prefer one organization over another. The dom is just a way of
making screen-readers aware of where information is on the screen. How it
is organized is up to the screen-reader designer.
Gene
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2017 12:39 PM
Subject: Re: [nvda] The DOM Debate
Thank you! This precisely 100% what I was
attempting to say initially.
--- Christopher Gilland Co-founder of Genuine Safe Haven
Ministries
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2017 12:41
PM
Subject: Re: [nvda] The DOM Debate
For many many users it is important to know somehow the
structure how information is being presented because they comunicate and work
together with sighted people. Yes, it is very important to find content
for one self as fast as possible. But we should not forget to learn structures
and so on.
Best
Adriani
Von meinem iPhone gesendet
Hi.
Not
sure I really have anything constructive to contribute to this debate. I
just wanted to say that whatever screen-reader I was using, I always use the
find command, and always have. No tutorials needed. What could be simpler?
There are pages I want to read through, and pages where I just want to get
stuff done. This is often the fastest and most efficient way, and I feel
like this would naturally occur to most users. It sounds like you are saying
it doesn’t, and that surprises me – but I’ve not ever received much training
for anything, as I always preferred to try things and find out for
myself.
Nothing is
perfect. Search is a very underused and very effective feature that
screen-readers offer and it is at times more effective than using other
methods. I didn't say to always use find and I didn't say to always
explore web pages and I didn't say to repeatedly explore the same page when
looking for the same thing. Using find is not exploring the web page
in the sense that you spend a lot of time looking in detail at the
page. At times, this is necessary. It often isn't, and here are
examples.
If you are
looking for an add to cart button, you can use the b command to move through
buttons. Depending on page layout, this may be faster than using
search or it may be slower. Why do you have to explore a page again
every time? You may have to explore a page, you may not. Doing
what I suggested, searching for a word like contact and repeating the search
isn't exploring the page. You are looking for a specific thing.
Also, there are many patterns that a lot of web pages follow. if you
want to listen to a radio station and you are on the site, if you search for
the word "listen" from the top of the page, you are very likely to find a
link with the word "listen" in it, such as "listen live." What if a
site has a link that says, clic, to listen or some such variation.
That's why I strongly advocate against using the links list on unfamiliar
sites. If a link has a word that is common for such links such as
listen, it will often be the first word. It won't always. Search
will find such a link. The links list, if you move by first letter
navigation, won't find it where you expect and you may waste time and effort
looking through a page when one search for the word "listen" might well have
found it.
Contact is
another example. Almost every site that provides a way for you to
contact someone, such as a letters editor, etc. will have the word contact
as part of the link. As in my previous example, contact will often be
the first word. Not always.
The inadequate
training a lot of people get teaches movement by heading and how to
use the skip blocs of links command. But it doesn't anywhere nearly
teach or emphasize using the find command and thus cheats blind people and
makes it much more difficult for them to use sites where headings or other
quick navigation techniques don't yield good results. And there are
times, such as I've discussed, when using other techniques isn't the best
first approach because they often work but not always.
----- Original
Message -----
Sent: Saturday,
December 02, 2017 2:47 AM
Subject: Re: [nvda] The
DOM Debate
Agreed but many people tend
to fall back on their memory of a page as even if they did explore it at
the start, to do so every time is a bit slow. Of course some pages like
Google web mail has some shortcuts, but to me I find such things still
sluggish to use.
Amazon seem to often have interesting variations on
a theme where certain buttons can be a link instead, presumably due to
their attempts to get you to buy other stuff when you selected a
particular one. For the sighted this looks obvious, but would you
actually really want to explore the page every time considering
how busy their site is with rotating suggestions and the like? I agree
search is a good thing to use but I've been fooled more than once by
there being several buying choices all with add to basket buttons for
example. Brian
bglists@... Sent
via blueyonder. Please address personal email to:- briang1@..., putting
'Brian Gaff' in the display name field. ----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene" <gsasner@...> To: <nvda@nvda.groups.io> Sent:
Friday, December 01, 2017 8:19 PM Subject: Re: [nvda] The DOM
Debate
And I wonder how much actual training material such as
tutorials explains this or does so to any extent. Unless things
have changed, and I havedn't seen much discussion in quite some time,
even small changes in a web site causes mass confusion because so many
people aren't taught to explore pages. Just changing the download link
to a download button caused a lot of confusion when Send Space made that
change. I hardly noticed it when it happened because I used the
screen-reader search feature to find the word "download." I found
the control just as easily and quickly either way. Actually, the button
is faster and easier because now I just type b once from the top of the
page to find it. But to those who learn by rote, even minute
changes may lead to an inability to do something on a
site.
Gene ----- Original Message ----- Gene ----- Original
Message -----
From: Ron Canazzi Sent: Friday, December 01, 2017
12:35 PM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject: Re:
[nvda] The DOM Debate
Hi Gene,
\
I have had bad
experiences with TVI people. One of them when asked if she knew
the basics of teaching JAWS said: "No, but I and my client will learn it
together." That speaks volumes.
On
12/1/2017 11:07 AM, Gene wrote:
Certainly, for those who want
to use programs that are not completely accessible, and that includes
most somewhat demanding and more demanding users, those are important
things to learn. But in this case, I think my analysis points to a
much deeper problem, the poor Internet instruction a lot of blind people
evidently get. I wonder how much traning material explains things
such as I describe. I don't know but I'm skeptical that it is
explained in a lot of material because of the kinds of problems and
questions people raise about using the Internet.
Gene ----- Original Message -----
From: Ron
Canazzi Sent: Friday, December 01, 2017 9:42 AM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io Subject:
Re: [nvda] The DOM Debate
Hi
Gene,
Long story short of your analysis: learn to
use your screen reader's quick navigation keys and other features.
This allows the reorganization and the advantages of DOM to
coexist.
On 12/1/2017 6:44 AM, Gene
wrote:
If you know how web pages are actually
organized, the contacts problem and other such possible problems can be
eliminated very easily. We, blind people, see a lot of links
moving down from the top of the page. A sighted person sees these
running down the left side of the page in a column. Then we see the main
content below the links. A sighted person sees the content toward the
middle of the page, moving from left to right on the page. Then a
blind user sees a lot of links in a block at the bottom of the page. A
sighted person sees these links running down the right side of the page
in another column, in the same way as the links on the left side are
seen.
So a blind person sees a bloc of links at
the top, main content below the links then another block of links at the
bottom. A sighted person sees links running down the left side,
main content to the right of those links, and on the right another block
of links running down the page in a column.
So, if
you are using a screen-reader with the ridiculous word wrap feature,
turn it off if it isn't off. then do a screen-reader search for
the word contact from the top of the page. Repeat the search to
see how many contact links there are. The one a sighted person
describes as being on the right is the one the blind person will see as
the second one, if there are only two and no more and there shouldn't be
any more. If there is only one, there is, of course, no
problem. When you get to the last one, if you repeat the search
again, you will get an error message. If you dismiss the error
message, you will still be on the link. You won't lose your
place.
You don't have to give up all the
advantages of reorganization and usually it is much better to leave
reorganization on.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
From:
Christopher-Mark Gilland Sent: Friday, December 01,
2017 3:08 AM To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] The DOM Debate
Adriani,
You make some extremely valid points
which should be carefully considered, yes. Thanks for your contribution
to the thread, and fair enough statements.
--- Christopher Gilland
Co-founder of Genuine Safe Haven Ministries
http://www.gshministry.org
(980) 500-9575 ----- Original Message
----- From: Adriani
Botez To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2017 3:58 AM
Subject: Re: [nvda] The DOM Debate
Hello,
I an not using screen
layout like in your second example due to following
reasons: - By navigating with down arrow
link by link I can decide by myself how fast things are being red since
I can decide not to hear the whole link label, but only let‘s say the
first half of the word. I don‘t have to wait until the last link on the
tab is being announced - If I want to
navigate link by link in screen layout, then I have to press the ctrl
key and the right arrow key (applies only for link bars like you have
described or for forms with many elements on one line). The problem is
that pressing ctrl + right arrow NVDA reads word by word and not link by
link or button by button. So I am navigating much slower through the
content - When navigating by ctrl + right
arrow through a link bar with 5 links to focus the last one, I don‘t
know when the bar ends unless I have listened to NVDA reading the whole
bar before - There is the NVDA addon
audiotheme 3d which gives me a screen presentation by playing a short
sound in my headfones exactly at the position where the object is
located on the screen.
Best
Adriani
Von meinem iPhone
gesendet
Am 01.12.2017 um 09:20
schrieb Christopher-Mark Gilland <clgilland07@...>:
For those who may have a bit of a hearing impairment, let me make it
very clear. In my subject, I'm saying DOM, D O M, not balm, b A L M.
Although some may call DOM the balm. LOL! And here therefore lies the
reason for my post this morning. - I fully realize that this is somewhat
a subjective topic, and that everyone will have his or her own opinions
on the matter. It is therefore my hope, that you, the reader, have an
open and civil mind, and observe this question from all angles before
making your response statement on list. I do not want to see this grow
to a heated war debate. Anyone who would like to publish this on their
website, or wherever is welcome to do so as long as you give credit back
to me.
First off, what is
DOM?
DOM, Document Object
Model, without getting too technical, is one way in which assistive
technology such as screen readers obtain information from one's computer
screen. When we load a website in our browser of choice, for example,
some screen readers use the DOM functionality to draw a representation
of the content on the
screen.
So, what does this
mean to us non-techies?
Put simply, though I am not particularly sure of the exact workflow
which occurs behind the scene, what I can tell you is this. Often times,
more than not, this approach requires the assistive technology sitting
in between the user and the web browser to redraw, as some would say,
the entire HTML content in completion. The reason that the word "redraw"
is used is because essentially, this is exactly what is
happening.
Once a website
is loaded, a certain amount of memory is allocated aside where the
website in question may be rendered. There are a few advantages to this,
however there are also some huge
setbacks.
Beauty and the
Beast
One of the
advantages which probably appears to be fairly obvious from an
outsider's perspective is that this will allow assistive technology to
use certain methods to gather the web content and then present the
material in an easy, robust, and sensably accessible manor. As the
writer of this post, let me assure all of you... I definitely see the
side of this argument.
Here's a practical example of
DOM.
Let's assume, for
just a moment, that you have loaded a website in the browser of your
preference, be it Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome,
etc.
On this
particular page, there are links which visually appear as horizontal
tabs extending across the top of the page. These tabs include the
following:
a.. Home b.. About
Us c..
Blog d..
Shop e..
Support f..
Contact Us
To fully
understand how this works, I encourage you to read the following part of
this e-mail by using your down arrow key, and reading line by line
individually. Here is what you will see. Remember before I go any
further with this, all of these links visually appear as one strip of
horizontal tabs running across the top of the web
page.
Link
Home Link About
Us Link
Blog Link
Shop Link
Support Link Contact
Us
Here's another
example.
You have a short
form on a website. This form asks for your first name, your last name,
and your e-mail address. Here's how DOM most likely would reinterpret
this. Again, please read this line by
line.
Please fill out the
following form so we may keep in
touch.
First
name
Edit Last
name
Edit
E-mail
Edit Submit
button Clear form
button.
First example
without DOM
Read this line
by line, and make sure this window with my message is maximized before
doing so.
Link home, Link
About Us, Link Blog, Link Shopt, Link Support, Link Contact
Us.
Second example without
DOM
Please fill out the
following form so we may keep in
touch.
First name
Edit Last name
Edit E-mail Edit, Submit:
button, Clear form:
Button.
The
difference
As you can see
in the above four illustrations, the first two examples were rendered in
such that each link/form control was on its own line. This is why I
asked you to read line by line, as doing a say-all, you never would have
most likely caught this. So, in other words, let's make this really easy
in plain english.
Refer
back to my very first example where we had the tabs which are being
represented as hyperlinks. As you recall, I said that they all went
horizontally from left to right across the top of the
page.
The problem is, DOM
renders each element, for lack of better word, as its own separate item.
For this reason, each element is on its own dedicated line of text. This
is why each link is seeming to appear on its own line by itself. The
truth is, these links in all actuality are not on multiple lines. They
are actually expanding across the entire marginal width of the screen.
Are you starting to see where this could be a potential
problem?
The second
example is slightly less annoying, however the point still stands in
existance.
We have a form.
If you've ever seen how a form generally looks on a print sheet of
paper, you'll note that most form field labels such as first name, last
name, etc. go down the left side of the sheet of paper. Then,
horizontally aligned beside these field labels is the data
value.
For example, I
might have a form printed out which I sign for a Hippa release at my
doctor's office. The first field may say, "Name". Out to the immediate
right of this will be either a line, or a box. It just depends on how
the form is designed, but the over all point is, there will be a second
column to the immediate right of where it said, "First name". This is
where I would write, "Christopher (Middle name) Gilland. Obviously, some
of you may know my middle name, but for privacy sake, I'm not including
it here.
Given how the
above physical print paper illustration is formatted, as most forms
online or not would be, does it really make sense to have the form
field, then the data directly below? No. It
doesn't.
Look at my above
second example without DOM. Notice that the edit box for all three
fields is now actually rendering exactly as it would be visually on the
screen. The boxes are to the immediate right of the fields, on the same
line. Doesn't that just naturally feel better in your mind, and make
more sense? It definitely should to most
people.
Finally, we have
both the submit, and the clear
vbuttons.
Does it make
sense to you that they'd both be virtically stacked one on top of the
other? It certainly doesn't to me! In fact, to me, I'd even go so far as
to say it seems absolutely gross! Maybe I am more a visual learner, but
even if I wasn't, this doesn't logically compute. However, this is
exactly how DOM is rendering it... One button, and one element per
line.
Helping the sighted
to guide you
So why is
this such a vbig deal? Call me a perfectionist, but let's assume for
just a moment that you're on the phone with a customer service
representative. They tell you to click the contact us tab located in the
upper right corner of the page. This would be a very poor website
design, and to any web debvs on here, please for the love of god, take
this in consideration! I can't tell you though how many times I've seen
this. A web designer will put a contact link at the top of the page
which has a form to e-mail them. Further down the page, they have
another contact link within the actual main body's content. The
difference however is, in this second link, though named identically the
same thing, "Contact Us", this second link doesn't direct the visiter to
a contact form, but instead gives a phone number, fax number, and
possibly a postal address. Totally unacceptable in my view! All this
should be consolidated on the one contact page at the top of the screen.
This however still proves my point, and like I said, I've seen this more
times than I could count, and would gbe rich if I had a dollar for every
time I have. OK, so, you now arrow through the page, or do an NVDA find
to locate the Contact link. Heck, you might even do NVDA+F7 to bring up
your links list. And believe me, though I'm directing this more as an
NVDA thing, NVDA isn't the only screen reader which can use the DOM
method. JAWS, for example, is incredibly! and I do mean, incredibly!
notorious for this. Now, think about this a minute with this really
convoluted scanareo regarding the contact link. - How are you going to
know which contact link to press enter on to open the contact form, if
you're in DOM navigation? Exactly! - You won't. It would be hit and
miss.
Now, let's take this
same situation without DOM
mode.
In this environment,
for lack of better word, you would observe both via audible speech, as
well as via braille output if you have a display, that the first
"Contact us" link is on the far right edge of the screen. You'd know
this as you'd see the other links like Home, About us, Blog, etc. on the
same line but to the immediate left before it. Does this make sense what
I'm saying?
The bottom
line
Regardless if you
choose to use DOM or not is not something anyone should decide for an
individual. If you are coming from a screen reader like JAWS as I have,
you definitely may find turning off DOM navigation to be extremely
awquard at best. I'd even go as far as to say that it may drive you
absolutely crazy at first, and make your web browsing experience seem
dreadful. I would however seriously encourage people to at least give it
a try for a few days without DOM navigation. Inevitably, if you're not
used to it, it's going to take some getting used to, however if you're
anything like me, I feel that eventually, you will really start to see
the benefits of not using DOM. DOM is great in my opinion, don't get me
wrong, but if you want, or need in a mission critical environment to
have an exact representation of the content, then fact is fact, you're
not going to get it with DOM mode, end of the story, it's just not gonna
happen, period. You might as well just accept it. The other thing to
also realize is, you are taking up unnecessary memory/processor power to
render things differently as an offline model. Granted, OK, it may not
be much, but that's not the point. It's still taking up what to some
would be considered as unnecessary
resources.
What are your
thoughts?
Do you use DOM?
If not, I'd be interested in your reasons why
not.
Chris.
--
They Ask Me If I'm Happy; I say Yes. They ask: "How Happy are
You?" I Say: "I'm as happy as a stow away chimpanzee on a banana
boat!"
-- They Ask Me If I'm Happy; I say Yes. They ask: "How
Happy are You?" I Say: "I'm as happy as a stow away chimpanzee on a
banana boat!"
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