EASI
recently hosted a series of free webcasts about how to use popular
Web accessibility checking software, such as WAVE and the Firefox Accessibility Extension. They have
posted both the presentation slides and the recording of each webcast.
This will give me a chance to catch the two presentations that I missed (AChecker and the Firefox Accessibility Extension). I attended the
WAVE and Cynthia Says webcasts live.
Jared Smith included many extra comments during the
WAVE webcast presentation that are not reflected in his slides,
so I recommend watching that recording to find out more about using the tool. The
Cynthia Says slides are fairly comprehensive and offer a
stand-alone overview of the tool.
I haven't installed a copy yet of Snow Leopard,
the recently released Mac operating system update,
because I'm waiting for some of my software to catch-up with the release.
However, I'm looking forward to the accessibility updates. There are many
improvements for Web browsing.
Here are highlights of the new capabilities:
- Determine how much information VoiceOver reads, with the ability to fine-tune it using up to 30 different settings.
- Auto-detect the main content of a Web page and skip directly to it.
- Add custom tags to portions of a Web page to easily jump directly to that section when you re-visit the page.
- Navigate through HTML Web tables like any other page content. You don't have to enter a form or table mode.
Plus, Apple offers other capabilities for visually and hearing impaired users.
The built-in Quick Start tutorial or this
PCWorld article
or this more personal view will provide more details. Enjoy!
