[gui-talk] Looking for instructions for understanding Facebooknonvisually

Wed Jul 22 04:57:28 UTC 2009

Gerald,

Not only is Dave correct about this, but I can provide one more example of 
the same thing, which is Amazon. If you know the site, as soon as the home 
page opens, Jaws is likely to say something about how, if you're using a 
screen reader, you might benefit from clicking on this link and going to 
their sort of mirror site. A lot of screen user people appreciate the 
simplified site with its low graphics and simplified layout, but Amazon 
didn't create that site expressly for the convenience of the blind Amazon 
customer any more than they introduced audio to Kindle for the sake of the 
blind. I'm not saying this cynically, and I don't think Dave meant it in 
that spirit either, or at least not entirely. it's just how it is.

The "Facebook team" is pretty much in the dark about blind computer users. I 
wrote them for help because for some reason I kept being asked to get past a 
CAPTCHA a few times *after* I'd managed to register (it only took me 
something like 20 minutes to find an "audio challenge" I could make any 
sense of and type to the system's satisfaction), and that problem was the 
crux of my request for help.

They replied with this sort of standardized (or boilerplate, as I meant to 
say) stuff about how to register, changed my pass, this and that, and in 
order to get going I had to sort of overcome their helpful tampering. Not 
once did they mention CAPTCHA technology in their reply. it all has worked 
out, so maybe I was never truly logged in and that's why, every time I tried 
to friend somebody, I got presented with that damn roadblock. But I don't 
think that was it. If it was, they didn't even bother to say so. They just 
went right to the registration issue without a reference to what I'd asked 
about. Duh. I'm not surprised that no one from the Facebook Team is playing 
in the All Star Game this summer. Sorry. Just feeling sarcastic about anyone 
who replies to me in writing online without sounding actually responsive to 
what I've written to them. That drives me completely nutty. I mean it both 
befuddles and offends me.

anyway, so much for the so-called "blind" Facebook site, okay? But it's got 
its uses, I can see that.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:11 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Looking for instructions for understanding 
Facebooknonvisually

Gerald:

To be clear, m.Facebook.com is not their "accessibility site."  It is
intended for small mobile devices, like phones and
PDA's.  Consequently, they have simplified the site to work with
these less sophisticated devices.  Any increased accessibility is
probably just an accident.

Dave

At 05:25 PM 7/21/2009, you wrote:

>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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