I agree and am just about to download and try thanks for the addon.   If I don't like it I just won't use it but keep up the good work.

On 03/12/2018 20:48, Tyler Wood wrote:

Hi,

Just because you know all of the browse commands (I know them enough myself) doesn't mean this is taking them away from you. I do not understand that logic.

Refusing to use this add on just because you know all of the commands doesn't make it any quicker - you're just giving yourself extra steps because you can.


Adblockers do nothing to hide the share on facebook, share on twitter garbage that 99^ of articles come with.


Sarah - claiming that 90 percent of websites is false, then claiming that more websites are filling with cluttered junk is very contradictory lol. This add on means to get rid of that and I for one applaud.


I include amazon in this. The amount of crap I have to sift through before I actually get to the product description is mind boggling.


On 2018-12-03 2:35 p.m., hurrikennyandopo ... wrote:

Hi Tony


Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.


I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.


I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.


when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.


The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.


I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.


My self i can see using it to.


Gene nz





On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss<sm.everiss@...> wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene<gsasner@...>  wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To:nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene<gsasner@...>  wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly.  For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To:nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--
Image NVDA certified expert
Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

Hi,
Just because you know all of the browse commands (I know them enough myself) doesn't mean this is taking them away from you. I do not understand that logic.
Refusing to use this add on just because you know all of the commands doesn't make it any quicker - you're just giving yourself extra steps because you can.
Adblockers do nothing to hide the share on facebook, share on twitter garbage that 99^ of articles come with.
Sarah - claiming that 90 percent of websites is false, then claiming that more websites are filling with cluttered junk is very contradictory lol. This add on means to get rid of that and I for one applaud.
I include amazon in this. The amount of crap I have to sift through before I actually get to the product description is mind boggling.
On 2018-12-03 2:35 p.m., hurrikennyandopo ... wrote:

Hi Tony


Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.


I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.


I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.


when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.


The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.


I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.


My self i can see using it to.


Gene nz





On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss<sm.everiss@...>  wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene<gsasner@...>  wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To:nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene<gsasner@...>  wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly. For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To:nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--
Image NVDA certified expert
Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

Hi Tony
Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.
I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box jump to the end of it then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.
I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.
when a person is learning they do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.
The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.
I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.
My self i can see using it to.
Gene nz
On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:
Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.
Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.
Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.
On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss <sm.everiss@...><mailto:sm.everiss@...> wrote:
To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.
Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.
I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.
On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:
I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.
Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.
On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:
Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.
Best
Tony
On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...><mailto:gsasner@...> wrote:
I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly. You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article. I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does. The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.
It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say. My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so. So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers. I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do. I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites. Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.
When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user? Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability. None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.
and there are lots of other kinds of forums. Some people like to
hang out
on political forums. they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums. As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode. I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.
also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode. This is an important feature. Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading. If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command. .
And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper. A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers. If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io<mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet
Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.
Best regards
Tony
On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...><mailto:gsasner@...> wrote:
I have some comments on your demo for TextNav. First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages. If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.
Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct. it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n. That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts. On some pages, move by heading works better. On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter. on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better. On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear. I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article. But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly. For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times. The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.
And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on. It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are. Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from. You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments. If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done. I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.
In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development. Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.
and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.
Gene
----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io<mailto:nvda@nvda.groups.io>
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet
Hello NVDA users
Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!
Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo
Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav
TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/
TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.
I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!
Sincerely,
Tony Malykh
.
--
[Image NVDA certified expert]
Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Vogel

To: nvda@nvda.groups.io

Sent: Monday, December 03, 2018 1:25 PM

Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse Internet

Tony,

         First, thanks much for the time and effort you put in to creating this add-on.

         Although I can agree that a number of points brought up since the initial announcement have some validity, many go well beyond the scope of your add-on alone and could be applied to any number of NVDA add-ons and, in fact, are really separate philosophical and practical issues of their own.

         You're a better man than I, as I know I would be feeling, "No good deed goes unpunished," were I you, and not being nearly so gracious about it.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Home, 64-Bit, Version 1809, Build 17763  

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

          ~ Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Vogel

To: nvda@nvda.groups.io

Sent: Monday, December 03, 2018 1:25 PM

Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse Internet

Tony,

         First, thanks much for the time and effort you put in to creating this add-on.

         Although I can agree that a number of points brought up since the initial announcement have some validity, many go well beyond the scope of your add-on alone and could be applied to any number of NVDA add-ons and, in fact, are really separate philosophical and practical issues of their own.

         You're a better man than I, as I know I would be feeling, "No good deed goes unpunished," were I you, and not being nearly so gracious about it.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Home, 64-Bit, Version 1809, Build 17763  

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

          ~ Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

 

 

Hi Tony

Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.

I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box  jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.

I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.

when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.

The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.

I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.

My self i can see using it to.

Gene nz

 

On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss <sm.everiss@...> wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly.  For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--

Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Vogel

To: nvda@nvda.groups.io

Sent: Monday, December 03, 2018 1:25 PM

Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse Internet

 

Tony,

         First, thanks much for the time and effort you put in to creating this add-on.

         Although I can agree that a number of points brought up since the initial announcement have some validity, many go well beyond the scope of your add-on alone and could be applied to any number of NVDA add-ons and, in fact, are really separate philosophical and practical issues of their own.

         You're a better man than I, as I know I would be feeling, "No good deed goes unpunished," were I you, and not being nearly so gracious about it.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Home, 64-Bit, Version 1809, Build 17763  

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

          ~ Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Vogel

To: nvda@nvda.groups.io

Sent: Monday, December 03, 2018 1:25 PM

Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse Internet

Tony,

         First, thanks much for the time and effort you put in to creating this add-on.

         Although I can agree that a number of points brought up since the initial announcement have some validity, many go well beyond the scope of your add-on alone and could be applied to any number of NVDA add-ons and, in fact, are really separate philosophical and practical issues of their own.

         You're a better man than I, as I know I would be feeling, "No good deed goes unpunished," were I you, and not being nearly so gracious about it.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Home, 64-Bit, Version 1809, Build 17763  

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

          ~ Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

 

 

Hi,

Just because you know all of the browse commands (I know them enough myself) doesn't mean this is taking them away from you. I do not understand that logic.

Refusing to use this add on just because you know all of the commands doesn't make it any quicker - you're just giving yourself extra steps because you can.

Adblockers do nothing to hide the share on facebook, share on twitter garbage that 99^ of articles come with.

Sarah - claiming that 90 percent of websites is false, then claiming that more websites are filling with cluttered junk is very contradictory lol. This add on means to get rid of that and I for one applaud.

I include amazon in this. The amount of crap I have to sift through before I actually get to the product description is mind boggling.

Hi Tony

Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.

I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box  jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.

I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.

when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.

The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.

I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.

My self i can see using it to.

Gene nz

On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss <sm.everiss@...> wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly.  For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--

Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav. First, it isn't a
substitute for learning the layout and structures of web pages. If
you use it before you know these things, you may not learn to deal
with other than straight reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when reading
the page you used is not correct. it is thirteen times more
efficient if you don't know how to work with internet pages for
reading something like an article well, but you used a very
inefficient method for your comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links command, the letter n. That gets you much much closer to the
article text because it skips most of the material on this page
before the article starts. On some pages, move by heading works
better. On some, move by skip nnavigation works bettter. on some,
move by heading, then using skip navigation links works better. On
some, the find command works better. You may not find an efficient
way to work with a page until you experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear. I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in skipping to the first sentence of an article. But you
don't hear the author, you may not hear introductory material you
might want to hear, and, if the article is more than two or three
paragraphs, it would be exceedingly tedious to issue the move to next
paragraph command repeatedly. For a somewhat long news article or a
somewhat long magazine article, I would imagine you might have to
issue the command twenty or thirty or forty or more times. The
add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on. It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information that might be of interest such as what rating the person
has for reliability or what his credentials are. Also, as you
continue to read and even if you know when a second post is beginning
to be read, you don't know who it is from. You can't be sure all the
time, I would think, who is commenting on comments for the first time
or who is making comments after making other comments. If the add-on
is going to really be useful in such an environment, it needs to do
more than just skip through entries by paragraph and not give you any
information such as what I described. I don't know if this can be
done. I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage its further development. Critics mmay be your best
friends in such situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading, I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that
notify me of something when I am reading an article and am not
interested in knowing such other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

NVDA works with both Google Docs and Word with their collaborative
features.

Of course, if you find any issues, do please let me know as I don't use
those features myself very often.

Quentin.

On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 6:24 AM Sile via Groups.Io <somodhrain=
googlemail.com@groups.io> wrote:

Hello


Has anyone found a platform (e.g. google docs, Microsoft word, or
whatever) that works with NVDA and supports collaborative editing in a
robust way?


Yours,


--Sile

--
Quentin Christensen
Training and Support Manager

Official NVDA Training modules and expert certification now available:
http://www.nvaccess.org/shop/

www.nvaccess.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NVAccess
Twitter: @NVAccess

Hi,

Just because you know all of the browse commands (I know them enough myself) doesn't mean this is taking them away from you. I do not understand that logic.

Refusing to use this add on just because you know all of the commands doesn't make it any quicker - you're just giving yourself extra steps because you can.

Adblockers do nothing to hide the share on facebook, share on twitter garbage that 99^ of articles come with.

Sarah - claiming that 90 percent of websites is false, then claiming that more websites are filling with cluttered junk is very contradictory lol. This add on means to get rid of that and I for one applaud.

I include amazon in this. The amount of crap I have to sift through before I actually get to the product description is mind boggling.

On 2018-12-03 2:35 p.m., hurrikennyandopo ... wrote:

Hi Tony

Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.

I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box  jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.

I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.

when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.

The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.

I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.

My self i can see using it to.

Gene nz

 

On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss <sm.everiss@...> wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly.  For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--

Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

Hi,

Just because you know all of the browse commands (I know them enough myself) doesn't mean this is taking them away from you. I do not understand that logic.

Refusing to use this add on just because you know all of the commands doesn't make it any quicker - you're just giving yourself extra steps because you can.

Adblockers do nothing to hide the share on facebook, share on twitter garbage that 99^ of articles come with.

Sarah - claiming that 90 percent of websites is false, then claiming that more websites are filling with cluttered junk is very contradictory lol. This add on means to get rid of that and I for one applaud.

I include amazon in this. The amount of crap I have to sift through before I actually get to the product description is mind boggling.

On 2018-12-03 2:35 p.m., hurrikennyandopo ... wrote:

Hi Tony

Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.

I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box  jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.

I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.

when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.

The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.

I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.

My self i can see using it to.

Gene nz

 

On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss <sm.everiss@...> wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly.  For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--

Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.

Hi Tony

Just been taking the add on for a test drive. I agree with you. When i am reading a website with the news on it basically as you already know locate the heading usually with a link then press the enter key to go into the story.

I would then have to jump down a couple of headings then a list box  jump to the end of it  then use the read to end command. Then it would come up with like email, face book etc which are links then the story might start. The add on as you said makes it a lot quicker to get to the story I want to read and leaves out the other stuff i do not want it to read.

I know there are people on this list who would use text based browsers i think one was called webbie and it would strip out the extra stuff and just have the text that could be read out which there are people who find it easier to do.

when a person is learning they  do not want information overload like memorizing all the quick navigation keys they only learn the main ones like headings, lists or links and how to go into a page and back a page.

The rest of the commands they can learn at a later date and are still present even though they are using the add on.

I could see a few of our older people using the add on to get to the story quicker without jumping to many hoops.

My self i can see using it to.

Gene nz

 

On 4/12/2018 9:10 AM, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
I don't see your comments hostile at all. You provide very reasonable
feedback for me, and I really appreciate that, though I don't quite
agree with some of your points.
1. TextNav is indeed supposed to be the easier way. The question is
whether this is good or bad in from the absolute point of view. I
agree it will reduce motivation for people to learn the proper way.
The good thing is it might allow some other people e.g. older people,
to use Internet. This is the trade off I see. Time will decide if it
is good or bad. But again, remember my example with Microsoft Windows?
Exactly the same argument was made, that Windows will make people lazy
and they will not learn the proper way to interact with computer using
command prompt. And then decades went by, and the right way became the
Windows way. So, sometimes, the definition of what's proper can
change. Not today, today as we agree, TextNav is not good enough to
fully replace traditional browse mode commands. But what I'm trying to
say is giv give a chance to the new tools. Give Windows and automatic
transmissions a chance. Nobody would blame you today that you don't
know how to press clutch.
2. You are trying to say that students first should learn Internet the
hard way, and only then try TextNav. I'm not a teacher, but I don't
understand why we cannot reverse the order. We don't learn calculus
before arithmetics. In general this is how education works, we start
with simple things and over the years learn more complicated things.
Why learning screenreaders must be an exception? When you're saying
that students won't learn the traditional browse mode commands because
TextNav is works for them, I can claim that students won't learn
calculus, because they're good enough with 3rd grade arithmetics. I'm
sorry to point that out, I hope you won't consider this to be a sign
of hostility, and I respect your point of view, but I just can't quite
agree with it.
3. I want to promote my add-on. I want more blind people to be aware
of it and at least try it once. I think it is going to be beneficial
for 90% of blind people. But it is very hard to communicate the
message. Last time I tried explainning to people what it really is and
not many people got it. So this time I decided to try marketing
techniques. I do exagerate things, but only a little bit. You might be
right when you want to call it just a reading add-on, but if I call it
a reading add-on, then only two users will actually try it. By calling
it "the new way of browsing Internet" I hope to attract some more
attention. Am I deceptive? Maybe a little bit, but nowhere near as
much as a typical TV commercial.

Sarah,
Please see my comment to Gene about the order of learning things.
I would still defend my 90/90% statement. The example of Amazon you
gave falls into the 10% that's not covered by TextNav - just because
there are form controls there. If a website has buttons and edit
boxes, obviously you cannot navigate it effectively using TextNav.
But let me give you a list of web sites where textNav would greatly
improve your efficiency:
News websites (hundreds of them), forums (thousands of them), blogs
(tens of thouusands, maybe more? whatever), product pages, Wikipedia
and other smaller wiki sites, online documentation sites.
These are just the major categories. Basically all the web sites where
you don't need to interact with form elements and that have some text
on them.

Sam
TextNav looks for text written in full sentences that are separated by periods.


On 12/3/18, Shaun Everiss <sm.everiss@...> wrote:

To be honest I won't be getting this, I know how to brouse, to be
honest, even though I was given extensive training for windows and jaws
back in the day, I have a subset of commands I use.

Since I have pulled out of uni and don't have a mainstream job my
commands have dropped.

I need enough to navigate the web, thunderbird, and a few other apps but
I honestly don't use that many comands at all.



On 12/4/2018 6:53 AM, Sarah k Alawami wrote:

I agree with jean. I push my students as well as I was pushed to learn
all of the browse commands and I was a beginner. Then and only then
could I learn other ways other easier ways.

Second, 90 percent out of 90 percent of websites? I don't think so.
Many websites are getting harder to use and more cluttered and full of
gunk that the sighted like and the blind hate. Amazon anyone? So. your
second claim is faulse, or soon might be.

On 3 Dec 2018, at 9:22, Tony Malykh wrote:

Gene,
It seems to me all your comments imply that I want to replace browse
mode keystrokes with TextNav. I emphasize, that TextNav does not
replace them, but it should be used in addition to them. I agree some
webdsites can be navigated very well with browse mode commands. I
agree that power users should learn all the browse mode commands. But:
1. TextNav is great for new websites. Even for power users, you can
quickly find out the right content without in-depth study of the
layout of this website.
2. TextNav is great for newbies. Instead of pushing students to learn
twenty five browse mode commands, just show them a single TextNav
keystroke, that can let you browse 90% of content on 90% of web sites.
And then, if they feel like learning more powerful techniques, they
can always learn all 25 of browse mode commands. I still remember
myself trying to learn all these browse mode command like five years
ago when I started to learn screenreadres, and it made me very
frustrated - so much stuff to learn. Why don't teach students a single
command on the first day to give them a teste of Internet, and then
move on to more powerful commands?
3. Older people that I know don't use Internet, because "it's too
complicated". I only try to solve this problem.
4. Again, I emphasize, that if you want to figure out the name of the
user on the forum, or the author of an article, you can always jus go
back to traditional browse mode commands. Again, TextNav is not a
replacement and doesn't strive to be one. However, in my daily
routine, 90% of the time I don't care about the author. I suspect many
NVDA users are like me, but I might be wrong here.
5. Automatic reading mode is stil available as NVDA keystroke. It
wouldn't skip over ads though. I might think of having automatic
reading mode with TextNav, but that's a suggestion for the future
development.

Best
Tony



On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I'll discuss some points:
First, something that I can comment on very briefly.  You only tried
the
skip blocks of links command on one site and, evidently, on one
article.  I
said that on some sites, one method works better and on others, another
does.  The skip blocks of links command is an important and useful
command.

It may be that some people want a very simple way to read articles
on web
pages and might have problems with using more complex ways, as you
say.  My
concern is that many people who can learn other ways that would give
them
far more versatility and who wouldn't have trouble doing so may be
disuaded
from doing so.  So perhaps you should discuss just what this is for
and its
limitations when you promote or describe it. It is a reading add-on
that
allows you to skip to the start of an article and skip all
interruptions to
the article such as groups of links to related material, advertisements
image descriptions, and perhaps other things I haven't thought of.
I think
that making this clear and saying that those who want to use the
Internet in
a wide variety of ways not involving mainly reading, such as music
sites and
search sites, still need to learn and become profficient in the
other ways
of web navigation NVDA offers.  I don't object to the add-on but
there are
many blind people who, because of a lack of knowledge or
self-confidence,
severely limit themselves because they don't realize or believe they
can't
do things they can do.  I'm not sure just how you would present the
add-on
but for a lot of people this would be an important convenience but
you are
extremely limited if you don't know enough about web page navigation
to use
search sites.  Even many of the older people you are discussing, I
suspect,
would want to know how to do basic searches.

When I read a forum, I want to find a solution but what if I don't
have any
idea which might be more likely to work or come from a more
knowledgeable
user?  Being more knowledgeable doesn't necessarily mean the
information is
better but I consider it to be information to be aware of, whether
someone
is a high ranking member of a list, an employee of Microsoft or some
other
relevant company or organization, and other information, if
available that
may help me assess his reliability.  None of this is heard in the
current
way the add-on works.

and there are lots of other kinds of forums.  Some people like to
hang out
on political forums.  they might well want to know who is writing so
they
can see if the person is worth reading and either skipping,
skimming, or
paying close attention to posts of certain authors.
there are an enormous number of forums.  As I said, I don't know if the
add-on can have some sort of forums mode.  I don't have the technical
knowledge to know.

also, you didn't respond to what I said about having an automatic
reading
mode.  This is an important feature.  Many people may use the add-on
to find
the beginning of an article but may not continue to use it to read the
article because they don't want to issue a command every few
sentences while
reading.  If there were an automatic read command, this would allow
people
to read as they would when using the speak to end command. But the
add-on
would skip any extraneous material and read the entire article without
interruption or the need to repeatedly issue the read command.  .

And while this isn't a forum, consider something like the op-ed
pages of a
newspaper.  A bit of information may be provided about guest
columnists that
may be useful to readers.  If someone works at a conservative think
tank,
his views may be very different than someone who works for a liberal
one.
If the person works for a specific company, I want to know that.
That puts
me on guard that his views may be defending the company for which he
works.
If such information is routinely stripped by the add-on, that is
important.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 10:56 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hi Gene,
Thank you for your feedback, I think these are very reasonable
questions you are raising.
1. I didn't claim that TextNav should replace the traditional way of
browsing internet. It should rather augment it, be an addition to the
standard navigation commands.
2. I see a lot of older blind people, for whom using computer is a
burden. You can claim they should still learn the proper way. Or you
can let them use the simpler way and let them enjoy what they can
enjoy with TextNav. Some of them might never be able to learn the
proper way - when you're 80 your brain doesn't work as well as when
you're 20. It is a question of simpler tools versus more powerful
tools. When cars with automatic transmission just appeared people were
claiming they are bad because the drivers will never learn to use the
clutch. Or when Windows appeared, some were claiming that it makes
people stupid, because they never learn the command-line way of unix.
Think of TextNav as a car with automatic transmission. And if you want
to learn more powerful ways to navigate web pages, NVDA browse mode
commands are always there.
3. I agree I might have slightly exaggerated about 13x speedup. But
when I use TextNav myself, I can browse the web many times faster.
4. I never knew of the N command in browse mode. I just tried it on
one web page and it seems to skip over the first paragraph of the
article. So you would have to press it a few times, try to figure out
if you are inside the article, and then go back up until you find the
beginning. All that compared to a single keystroke of TextNav.
5. Crackling sound can be turned off or made quieter in the settings.
6. Often times I just want to read the article. I don't want to read
the name of the author, date of publication, read the description of
the image. Sometimes the article is interesting, and I might want to
find the name of the author. Again, I can always do it with the
standard browse mode command. But Most of the times I don't care. By
skipping over these fields, you save a few seconds every time, but
this accumulates over the day into a much more efficient browsing
experience. Time will show how many NVDA users are like me not
interested in the name of the author.
7. Same thing on the forum. I come to forums to solve my problems,
like in my example, the problem with bluetooth headphones. I don't
care whatsoever what's the nickname of the guy who asked the question,
and I care much less who answered it.

Best regards
Tony


On 12/2/18, Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

I have some comments on your demo for TextNav.  First, it isn't a
substitute
for learning the layout and structures of web pages.  If you use it
before
you know these things, you may not learn to deal with other than
straight
reading situations well.

Your claim that TextNav is thirteen times more efficient when
reading the
page you used is not correct.  it is thirteen times more efficient
if you
don't know how to work with internet pages for reading something
like an
article well, but you used a very inefficient method for your
comparison.
You didn't start at the top of the page and use the skip blocks of
links
command, the letter n.  That gets you much much closer to the article
text
because it skips most of the material on this page before the article
starts.  On some pages, move by heading works better.  On some,
move by
skip
nnavigation works bettter.  on some, move by heading, then using skip
navigation links works better.  On some, the find command works
better.
You
may not find an efficient way to work with a page until you
experiment.
Once you do, you can use other article pages on that site the same
way.
I want to be clear.  I am not saying that the add-on isn't very
useful in
skipping to the first sentence of an article.  But you don't hear the
author, you may not hear introductory material you might want to hear,
and,
if the article is more than two or three paragraphs, it would be
exceedingly
tedious to issue the move to next paragraph command repeatedly.  For a
somewhat long news article or a somewhat long magazine article, I
would
imagine you might have to issue the command twenty or thirty or
forty or
more times.  The add-on needs an automated mode for straight reading
uninterruptedly.

And finally, your forum example demonstrates a real deficiency in the
add-on.  It starts reading the text of the first post and skips all
information about who wrote it or how old it is or any other
information
that might be of interest such as what rating the person has for
reliability
or what his credentials are.  Also, as you continue to read and
even if
you
know when a second post is beginning to be read, you don't know who
it is
from.  You can't be sure all the time, I would think, who is
commenting
on
comments for the first time or who is making comments after making
other
comments.  If the add-on is going to really be useful in such an
environment, it needs to do more than just skip through entries by
paragraph
and not give you any information such as what I described. I don't
know
if
this can be done.  I don't know if a forums mode can be developed.
That
is
f o r u m, as discussion forum, not to be confused with what some
people
call forms mode in some browsers for filling out forms.

In short, the add-on has potential and I am not attempting to
discourage
its
further development.  Critics mmay be your best friends in such
situations.
But I think the add-on needs more work and refinement.

and one last thing I forgot to mention earlier:
The crackling sound should be able to be turned on and off. If I'm
reading,
I don't necessarily want to hear extraneous sounds that notify me of
something when I am reading an article and am not interested in
knowing
such
other information.

Gene
----- Original Message -----

From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2018 6:25 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: [nvda] Introducing TextNav add-on - a better way to browse
Internet


Hello NVDA users

Today I am introducing TextNav add-on for NVDA - a better way to
browse
Internet for the blind!

Have you ever felt that browsing new pages is frustrating when you
couldn't find the content on the page? Try TextNav - it will find the
right content for you in a single keystroke! TextNav is easy to use.
Listen to a quick demo (7minutes long audio):
https://soundcloud.com/user-977282820/textnav-promo

Here is the link to download TextNav:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/files/get.php?file=textnav

TextNav on github:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/

TextNav keystrokes:
* Alt+Shift+Down: Find next paragraph with text.
* Alt+Shift+Up: Find previous paragraph with text.

I hope you enjoy it! Any suggestions are welcome!

Sincerely,
Tony Malykh

.

--

Check out my website for NVDA tutorials and other blindness related material at http://www.accessibilitycentral.net Regardless of where you are in New Zealand if you are near one of the APNK sites you can use a copy of the NVDA screen reader on one of their computers. To find out which locations (or location) is near to you please visit http://www.aotearoapeoplesnetwork.org/content/partner-libraries (Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa). To find an NVDA certified expert near you, please visit the following link https://certification.nvaccess.org/. The certification page contains the official list of NVDA certified individuals from around the world, who have sat and successfully passed the NVDA expert exam.