Oh, ok. Thanks. so do you think this forum would be easy to post
in?
Based on Rayette's offering a link I think it's safe to say
that participating in a web forum is what's being asked about.
Having visited the website there are actually two forums hosted
there, a public one and a private one due to the sensitive
nature of the potential conversations themselves.
The public forum allows you to post as an unregistered guest.
Once you activate the "Post New Topic" button you are presented
with a web form (where you could log in if you have an account)
but that by default shows you as user "Unregistered," offers a
ReCaptcha (the audio version of which is a number sequence
that's very easy to understand and spoken very slowly) to prove
you're actually human, and the following fields and controls for
your post:
- Title
- the actual message composition box, which NVDA announces as
"Rich Text Editor" because that's what's used for composition.
You can simply type if you do not wish to employ any of the
formatting buttons.
- a dropdown box that allows you to give a specific trigger
warning to potential readers about the nature of the content
of your message
- a submit new thread button
- a preview post button
I would have to presume that the private forum setup would be
largely the same but that since login is required no ReCaptcha
would be used. The preceding only covers posting, not reading,
which is its own kettle of fish.
As Antony already noted, it's impossible to give truly generic
instructions with regard to web forums, though there are several
major formats that do get used repeatedly on different forums
websites. If you intend to get heavily involved on a specific
web forum it really is helpful to have a sighted assistant
during the first couple of tries just so they can walk you
through the controls that they see (some of which you may or may
not need). Once you've got a given forum "system" down it's
reasonably easy to use other forums that are using the same
forums management software. It's also somewhat easier to plow
your way through an unfamiliar forums software used elsewhere
because you now have experience, and there are some strong
similarities, though you may need or want sighted assistance to
work through the differences.
Most online forum pages present lists of topics in the form of
links, so using your screen reader to get a list of links is
often a shortcut for getting a quick feel for what's currently
being discussed. Some, depending on how they've structured the
page, might also be categorized as headings, so using that
element type can also sometimes be helpful. In the case of the
particular forum Rayette shared the link to they structure their
forums page such that threads are beautifully displayed as a
list of headings, where the thread title is the heading. In
NVDA the level 0 heading is the forum title itself and all the
level 1 headings are the threads.
--
Brian
Here is a test to find out whether your mission
in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.
~
Lauren Bacall
