I've been having a conversation with one of my grocery stores here in town that has a service for web ordering and delivery (actually the service includes this store plus two or three others in different towns). I couldn't shop with it at all in lynx the cat or links the chain but did, with great effort, make it through an order using freedombox, which means that eventually those using gnopernicus and/or orca probably would be able to do it with mozzilla. freedombox has a program called C-saw, whereby you can put labels on imaged links and then submit them to a repository so others on freedombox will see those when they go to the website instead of just "link" "link" "link" for a lot of the links. However, the submission key mapping for c-saw is alt+s, which the site uses to jump people to the recipe search box. I can, however, still use alt+l, which is used in c-saw to do the initial labeling, to look at the image url and link url. I talked to somebody involved in the grocery deliver department, though not a technical person. She seemed genuinely interested in how the website could be made accessible. I'm afraid I wasn't very good at explaining to her why, if they have a link with a graphic that does have the words for the link within the graphic, I don't even get the words displayed. when I explained to her that with C-saw I could see the name of the url and thereby often deduce what it was but couldn't use the C-saw program because they have alt=s (the key mapping used to do c-saw submissions) mapped to a recipe search box, she immediately offered to talk to their web design person about removing the alt+s keymapping from their site. I've frankly never had anybody be so responsive. she also wanted to know if I could point her to a website they could use as an example of how to do things accessibly. This is where my writing to this list comes in. Can anybody point me to a webpage to which I can point her for an example of how they can still do their graphics but make the site accessible for blind people? Also, is there a webpage that gives information they can read about how they could implement accessibility on their website with the least wear and tear possible. I don't have to be as concerned about javascript in freedombox, though I certainly am going to explain that this can be an added barrier. If anybody wants to try looking at the website with which I am dealing, it's http://www.sentryonthego.com You'll see that by looking at the url title at the bottom of your page when you are at each link, you can often get an idea what the link is but not always. And to enter the store they use some kind of button that even on links the chain just gives you an ok at the bottom of the page and nothing happens when you try to use the link; you can get into the tour and the tips for shopping but that's it. In freedombox i can shop using the search box they have, but I haven't yet found the link that helps you browse the aisles as they describe so I don't know if I'm missing it or if there's some other reason I just can't get there. There are a whole lot of inaccessibility issues with this website but I don't want to overwhelm them by telling them to change a whole bunch of things at once. If they do go ahead and drop the alt+s mapping it would indicate to me that they are serious about accommodating blind customers. In that case, I'd like to give them the tools for educating themselves about what would help with their site and give them some space to see how far they take it. I think when somebody shows an eagerness to do what needs to be done to make a site accessible, we want to encourage that, and sometimes if we point out a whole list of things at once we can overwhelm people into feeling they can't do what is needed and so they may react by doing absolutely nothing. I think I may have a really receptive business here (they are also usually very helpful to blind shoppers who come into the store) and i would like to make the most of it. Thanks for any suggestions. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
