🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi all.  I have been asked to provide one-to-one web training for an old
friend, a blind man and former NASA engineer, using email only (he is on
the other side of the country.) He is connected to the net and uses
email well, is comfortable with his system, and is ready to move onto
the web. He has occassional (but expensive) in-home assistance available
from his home state's Center for Blind.

He navigates using the keyboard, no mousing.   His system uses a speech
synthesizer (Henter-Joyce program- "JAWS") and we are negotating how
well it reads urls as text in the body of emails (or whether we must use
phonetic spellings) while I am getting him oriented to the environment.
He has tried using Navigator in the past, but couldn't get past the
graphical layouts and other whistles and bells to even start thinking
about how to search.  I know that after we get our communication
negotiated one of the first things we'll do is get him a text-only
browser, like Lynx.

This is a new information need area for me, on many dimensions very much
like the blind leading the blind. If you have helpful tips and leads to
resources that will help us, I'll be grateful to receive them and will
compile and post to the list.
joanne
___
joanne twining
twining@texoma.net
www.intertwining.org