This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,783 for Wednesday, the first of February 2023.
Today's show is entitled Accessibility and Navigating the HP R-Web Pages with a screen reader.
It is the tenth show of Mike Ray and is about 22 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag, the summary is, Mike puts the HP or website to the test.
Welcome to Hacker Public Radio, my name is Mike Ray.
HP R is a crowd-sourced podcast. One show is published every weekday, and the shows are all recorded by people like you and me.
Everybody is invited to record a show and submit it.
Any links, any subject that might be of interest to the wider Hacker community, any subject in general.
We have not only technical things about, for example, free open source, Linux programming languages, programming concepts, but also things like electronics, car repairs, bike repairs, travelling.
Anything you, you catch a mention, ready.
In order to find out how to record and submit a podcast for HP R, go to hackerpublicradio.org, where you will find out exactly what to do.
On there you will also find a list of all of the previous hosts, people that have recorded shows, a list of all of the previously recorded shows, you can go and listen to the back catalogue.
You would even find a list of subjects which people have suggested or requested.
So if you don't have a subject, you can take off, you can maybe pick on from the list.
Anyway, now this podcast that I'm doing now is going to be related to the subject of accessibility, because new listeners may not be aware, but I am totally blind.
People that have been listening to HP R for some years will be aware of that.
I only from my shows in the past, but also from my interaction on the comments page and also in the mailing list possibly.
Now I've been a software engineer for 32 years, and totally blind for the last 12 of those 32 years, but I am still a successful software engineer.
There has been some discussion in recent months, and there has been in the past that now and again on accessibility, only email English, particularly with Dave Boris as Dave is the author of many of the pages, and the discussion may have been about the accessibility of pages on the HP R website, accessibility in general.
And the nature of using a screen reader, how to use a screen reader, how it works, et cetera.
Now what I'm going to do tonight is I'm going to, after recording this initial introduction, I'm going to set my recorder, which I'm using total recorder on Windows.
And I'm going to switch over the recorder so that it will record not only my voice, but also the screen reader.
Now I apologize what I saw of apologize to people who don't like HPC, because it is going to be HPC that you hear.
I will crank down the speed so that ordinary mortals can understand what is happening, and I will be giving some sort of commentary in the background.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to navigate the Hacker Public Radio homepage, and talk about the various ways in which a blind person navigates a webpage, and then I will possibly try to find the tags page, which Dave Morris has modified,
quite extensively in previous recent months, following my feedback on the problems I was having with the tags page.
So I will pause this just for now, and I will make the adjustments to the recorder and go to the Hacker Public Radio homepage after I have started the recording.
Now this is going to get a little bit annoying for some people maybe, but if you're curious, stick with it, and you'll hear, you'll probably hear me jumping around the page quite rapidly, and you'll hear repetition.
As I navigate, thought and backward between landmarks, now what are landmarks actually, before I pause and read just most screen readers, including NVDA, which is the open source screen reader I'm using on Windows.
I'll allow me to navigate through to the next or to the previous landmark, and landmarks are things like headings, links, visited links, list items, combo boxes, checkboxes, graphics, separators, there are others, but I can't think of what they are at a moment.
One of the things I might do in this podcast is to switch on the NVDA helper mode, and it will read out as I press each key, what that key does.
It will give you some education as to what landmarks exist and how I can navigate the page.
So this is probably like you'd be quite a lengthy, and a little bit irritating for some people who don't have any real interest in hearing it, but if you're a web developer, or if your name is Dave Morris, you might like to persist if you can, and follow what I'm doing.
Right, let's pause for now.
Here we go, let's switch to the home page of HackerPublic Radio.
Again, if I hit the Del Narrow once, it's too links on that line, the site map, and now I'm going to do that again, and go to that one line and down one line again, very quickly to get it to repeat what it just said.
We did a link on that link to the main content.
One of the things that you will see, or that you will be aware of, if you are an accessibility aware web developer, many websites contain links, a good example being the BBC website, at the very very top there will be a link that says something like skip to main content, and then there might be a link that says skip navigation.
The links, chances are, are not visible to sighted people, but the screen reader can see them.
They will be presented to me in a form of the voice than the screen reader.
So let's go back to the top and then go to what we're going to do next is we're going to navigate by heading, so I'm going to be hitting the HK to navigate by heading.
Right, let's crank down the speed a little bit as well to make it a bit more understandable for most people.
Right, 50, great 45, great 40, great 35, and I'll try not to reach for the razor blades, which is talking very slowly.
Spread that word heading level 3.
If I hit shift H, I can go back through headings.
Join the conference, welcome every 11, and you'll find a landmark in your ideas.
Kaka feeling, Kavlikarling, no previous heading.
Right, no previous heading, so I've hit the top heading.
Really did link, Kaka public radio not.
Back to the top of the page again.
Now I'm going to hit K to navigate through the links.
Side map link.
Skip to main content link.
Let's hit the skip to main content link with the return key.
Or I could press modify a keypad into which is the activate effect.
I'll do that, and you'll hear it's deactivate wherever the word is.
I can't remember.
Activate.
Haka public radio deal, the technology community podcast.
Haka and Mark Village, link, site map, link, site map, link, skip to main content.
Having level 1, Haka link, the public link, Ravio.
Having level 2, your ideas, comment.
Projects.
I went into riddle mode just then.
New episodes Monday through Friday not heading level 3.
Main landmark site map heading level 1.
Content info and mark more information, not not not.
Jumping by heading is again.
Let's go back to the top of the page.
Mark Village, link, site map.
She if we have any combo boxes.
I can hit the C key to see if we have any combo boxes.
No next combo box.
No next combo box.
What about list items?
Grabita Namepath, link, link, link, link.
H verdade, link, link, link.
Link, link, link, link, link, link, link, link, link, link, link.
Anything on list to Product, link, link, link.
Phone.
Silicon.
What's on list?
Apple
actually it's the LK to jump from list to list. Just go back to top of the boat again.
Out of list man and hit the LK.
Navigation and marked list with seven items upwards.
List with seven items. Oh, I don't mean hitting me.
Control K to make the screen ready shut up at times as well.
Main and marked list with eleven items. List with eleven items. List with three items.
List with three items. List with five items.
And again, I can hit Shift L to go back to the list.
List with three items. Well, it's upwards.
I don't mean marked navigation and marked list with seven items.
No previous list.
So there we go. That's the list.
Now, let's activate the NVDA Helper mode.
And we can have a look at some of the other landmarks that are available.
Input Helper mode. And we can VDA plus Q. With NVDA left control.
That's just quick and video I have Q. And NVDA plus double Q.
And NVDA plus E. And NVDA plus R.
Recognize the content of the current Navigator object with window no CR.
And NVDA plus C. Report the title of the current application for foreground window not.
If pressed twice comma, spell the title not. If pressed three times comma,
the title of the clipboard.
That was then video modify Q plus T. This is Y.
And NVDA plus Y.
Uh, I should not anything at all.
And NVDA plus U. Tommels between VbScomer.
VbScomer. VbScomed. VbScomed.
And offcomer for reporting progress now updates.
Again, not a landmark.
There's some of the things that I know are landmarks.
And NVDA plus C. Report the text on the window clipboard.
Oh, no hang on, I'm doing something wrong.
Right, let's start that again.
Double U moves to the next error.
This is without using a modifier K.
Q moves to the next lock quote. Double U moves to the next error.
E moves to the next edit field.
R moves to the next radio button.
D moves to the next table. Why?
Q moves to the next unvalid link.
L moves to the next list item.
So moves to the next embed in object B.
Okay, I think there are some more.
Where am I? Here we go.
A moves to the next annotation.
S moves to the next separator.
The moves to the next landmark.
F moves to the next form field.
G moves to the next traffic.
H moves to the next heading.
J.
K moves to the next link.
L moves to the next list.
Semi.
L moves to the next check marks.
T moves to the next combo marks.
T moves to the next button.
T moves to the next button.
K keeps forward past unlock of links.
M moves to the next frame.
Comet moves pastly and knock the container element to Comet.
Such an at least for table.
G moves to the next corner.
T moves to the next command.
So that gives you some ideas.
Navigation keys.
I can use jump between.
Lama.
Lama.
G moves to the next.
T move to the next player.
R moves to the next spot.
and I think the shows that I was originally looking for back when I was talking to Dave about the subject was the was the Apache message broker which
whose name I can't remember. I've been telling telling telling telling. Got an idea it might start was might start with Jay. I think telling.
Jay, yes, but that's going to be Mr John Mr Don Culpo. John Culpo, I should think. Let's go.
Thanks for visiting the link. New miracle contractions.
I can't find it. But it was the Apache. So let's go back to the touch beginning with it.
Okay, thanks for coming with it all.
Okay, the first lamp show says lamp and the show number.
lamp server and the show number.
So each case I'm getting the tag and the show number which is exactly what I wanted. So this page is now fantastically navigable because it's got a heading at the beginning of each number or letter tag sequence.
So, you know, I think the first one was a hash symbol and then one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine, zero, ABC, D E after it writes who does that. So it's now supremely navigable.
I don't know whether there's anything else on each to talk about whether there's anything else I missed or deleted or messed up in the edits.
It's quite a difficult thing to do. I think it's quite a long show.
So maybe I'll leave it there and if there's anything else anybody wants to know anything else that Dave wants to know.
And I hope that eSpeak hasn't been too difficult for you to listen to, particularly as I've kept forgetting to crank back the speed from the higher level that I have it running at.
I don't know if it running quite as high as a little bit a lot of blind people.
But it does talk very fast and it turns to shock new people who, you know, and some people say that is some people.
Say that eSpeak is not very comprehensible anyway, but I don't understand that myself.
I do hear on occasions that eSpeak is not terribly good at languages other than English.
I can understand that.
But as far as I'm concerned, the best thing about eSpeak is it's small footprint size.
It just gets out of my way and I, you know, I just, I can get my work done with it.
I don't have to worry about it.
There are some nicer variations and voices in some of the later.
It was my excuse me for your name. I think on my one of my work laptops, I've got a variation of which I think is called James, but the default variation is Max.
And that's the one you've been listening to in this podcast.
So there we are. I'm going to cut off now. I'm going to end it now.
Hopefully everybody has got a better insight into how I blind person might navigate a web page and what I was banging on a bell.
When I was complaining to Dave and Ken about the accessibility of the tax page.
Okay, now what you don't know is that I recorded the tax part of that twice.
Because I screwed up by somehow managed to get the home page part recorded.
And then I recorded the tax part and that appeared before the home page part.
So I'm using total recorder on Windows and as you might imagine editing a quite sizable audio file.
When you're a raspberry ripple like me, you can't see is my shing is.
You just caught me running so long on an international podcast. It's quite difficult.
So I deleted the tax section and re-recorded it.
And now I'm going to correct a couple of things.
I think I said in there quite a lot about the hair here, here, here aspect of.
Linking, you know when people put the word here.
But I think then I went back and recorded the tax page and actually pointed out that I was just getting the show numbers.
But now that Dave's fixed it, I get the tag and the show number.
And I just cleaned up a few little bits of pieces.
Quite a fiddly thing to edit. And I'm aware that I forgot to crank back the speed.
I kept cranking the speed back up again to make changes when I wasn't recording.
And I'm forgetting to crank the speed back again for ordinary people.
When I was recording it, so I became that okay.
Anyway there we go. It's quite a long podcast, quite difficult to do.
Quite a lot of involved in it, but I've learned quite a bit about total recorder.
And I've also learned that I sound quite posh at 1.5 speed.
Anyway, there we go. I hope that was some use to people.
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