[gui-talk] Looking for instructions for understanding Facebooknonvisually

[Gerald Levy]

Try using the accessible version of Facebook, which is a lot easier to 
navigate than the regular Facebook site:

http://m.facebook.com/

Gerald

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "GUI-Talk" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 4:23 PM
Subject: [gui-talk] Looking for instructions for understanding 
Facebooknonvisually


>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
>
>
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