[gui-talk] Looking for instructions for understanding Facebook nonvisually

[Joel Deutsch]

I use Jaws 10 and IE 7. I've finally caught up with the times and gave up 
enough of my habitual introversion to register on Facebook, but although 
I've managed somehow to invite and be invited by a few friends, in general I 
can't really understand how the site's functions work or what's going on 
when one or the other site pages load in response to my activating this or 
that link.

The closest I can come by way of comparison is the main Amazon site, which 
took me ages to become a pretty good navigator of, to the point where 
choosing to use their simplified and less graphical mobile site is now a 
choice, not a dependency, because I know so many screen elements to search 
for and skip to and/or single letter Jaws commands to use.

But I can't, at least  right now, imagine getting anywhere near such skill 
with Facebook, not just because I can't simply see the layout of the pages, 
which sighted friends assure me is a frightful mess even if you're not 
dealing with a screen reader. it's because I don't understand most of the 
terminology of the site and what the things Jaws speaks to me actually mean.

Just for instance: I guess that commenting is an important way you maintain 
a dynamic presence on the site. And with a couple words of helpful 
suggestion from a sighted friend who's a little more up on things than I am, 
I guess I learned that the word "status" and the updating of one's status 
has nothing to do with your health, being coupled or single, and so forth. 
it's more like what's up with you at the moment, or as the note on the 
screen says, what's on your mind. So you're supposed to do what I read that 
they do on twitter? Say I'm eating breakfast now and I just love this 
banana! and that's your "status" pronouncement of the moment? Or something a 
little more complex and wordy if you prefer, I guess. But that seems to be 
the idea. The word "status" doesn't really mean anything, here, not in the 
English I speak. But I think I get it, and that's what's important.

Okay. So if I wanted to sort of blog on my part of the site, I'd type and 
press Upload Status occasionally.

Then people could comment, like say I hate bananas or sometimes a banana is 
just a banana, Ingrid and the next person could just type LOL.

but beneath each comment from someone on my Friends list, I see two links. 
The first one says dash comment, which I guess is an invitation to type a 
comment to someone else's posting. Okay. I'll try that sometime. But beneath 
that, jaws says "dash Like." Now here's another example of ordinary words 
whose meaning I obviously don't get on Facebook. if you click on Like, what 
happens? have you voted for the comment you just read, for instance? I don't 
see a "dislike" link. What else could it mean besides "I like that comment?" 
I know this is a dumb, dumb question. but I don't get any of this, and I 
have a feeling this is a really essential part of participation.

I wanted to go on to ask what a Wall is, and what writing on it means, but 
I'll save that. first I'd like to see if anyone knows anything to begin 
with. And sure, if in the Help section of that site, somewhere, there's 
actual instruction about what all this means and how to use the site so that 
I could stop trying to intuit it navigating with Jaws and hearing all this 
repetitious gibberish and ads, someone tell me where to look for education.

Thanks, everybody.
Joel