Screen Capture of Netscape Session
The following image is a Netscape screen capture of the home page of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This web page was designed to work with text browsers while providing a graphical layout for seeing users. The page includes a javascript mouseover script that provides some animation, but the designer made certain that the information provided by the script was available in text form as well. By following the rules of good web design and testing the site with text browsers, the designer ensured access to the site by both seeing and visually-impaired users.
Screen Capture of Lynx Session
The following image is a Lynx screen capture of the Natural History Museum home page. Lynx is a text-based web browser and is commonly used by people with low-bandwidth connections, or by people at universities and research institutions who prefer quick access to text information.
Clearly, this web page was designed to look good when viewed with a text browser. The text is well spaced and alternate text is available for all images. This web page should perform well when accessed by a blind person equipped with an auditory browser such as Web Speak.
Screen Capture of Web Speak Session
The following image is a Web Speak screen capture of the Natural History Museum's home page. Web Speak is an auditory browser supplied by Productivity Works. It works by reading a web page out loud to a visually-impaired user. Links and images are specified and the user is able to navigate via a standard computer keyboard. The most important point to consider when designing a site that may be visited by the visually-impaired, is that the information on the web page must be accessed in a linear fashion, from start to finish. Select this text if you would like to hear what a visually-impaired person hears when using Web Speak.
Although the web page was designed to work with a text browser such as Lynx, the designer did not test the page on an auditory browser such as Web Speak. Even so, the web page is almost perfectly interpreted. However, the designer made use of standard html header tags to format the text of the links that appear to the right. Header tags should be used to delineate topics from sub topics. In this case, the header tags are unnecessary and add to the length and complexity of the audio.
