Research with Voice Over, and design decisions, for Web Access Solution

After my last blog entry on the Web Access Solution, I received the Mac laptop NV Access had hired for a week, so I could test out the way Voice Over handled access to the web.

On the whole, I found that using Voice Over, I was able to perform any task I needed to, though the keyboard commands took me quite a while to get used to. Though it was a nice feeling to be able to unpack the laptop, turn it on, and press command f5 and have the system start talking, allowing me access to 99% of the operating system.

For navigation, Voice over takes an approach which is sort of a mix between Gnopernicus/Virgo/NVDA (tree-based object navigation) and Jaws/Hal/Window Eyes (flat screen model). Voice Over allows you to navigate by object, though its tree-structure is very minimal. Its more as if the order of objects is governed by where they appear on the screen, rather than where they are logically positioned.

When I used Safari, I noticed that Voice Over does not use the virtual buffer flat-model approach to web content like many Windows screen readers, but just continues to allow the user to use its operating system wide object navigation. Once you type in the URL, and then locate the html content, you can either tell Voice Over to read all the objects inside the html content object, or you can enter the html content object and then navigate around the objects within.

It was nice to be able to quickly get an idea of the structure of the page using object navigation, though I did feel yet again that the tree-structure was quite minimalistic. Ialso found it a little hard to review bits of information on a page, as you could only really move between paragraphs and other elements, rather than also being able to move easily between lines and characters etc. There is a mode you can switch in to to review by character on an object, though it is quite fidly to do.

Having had a play with Voice Over on the web, We have decided that there are advantages and disadvantages to both object navigation and a flat model approach. We have planned now to make sure that NVDA's web access solution uses not one or the other, but both in paralell.

The idea will be that when you go to a web page, the content will be loaded in to a flat representation, but also you will be able to use NVDA's object navigation at the same time. In fact, each time you move with in the flat model, where you are in object navigation will be updated. And the same goes for moving with object navigation: your position in the flat model will be updated.

This means that users can use what ever approach they like to read the page. Some highly structured information might be best navigated by object, but some textual information might be best read in a flat model.

There will most probably also be a setting in NVDA to say whether you in fact want the flat model at all. Some users may only want to use object navigation, and in that case,they shouldn't have to be affected by the rendering of a flat model they never intend to use.

I must admit I was a little surprised at Voice Over's object navigation. Users of Voice over have been singing its praises for quite a while, in that Voice Over takes a very different approach to web access. Although I personally totally agree that object navigation is very useful, in truth object navigation has been around in Gnopernicus, and Virgo4 for many years. Plus, NVDA has had the ability to navigate a web page (at least in Firefox) by object navigation for over a year, though it seems to me that many users of Windows don't seem to find this useful.

So, hopefully with NVDA having both, users can choose which way is best for them.