Internet Explorer with JAWS part 2.

Surfer girl animation. tutorial

Web Searching Strategies.

Not all Web pages are designed the same way. In fact, most are unique which is partly what makes the internet so interesting. good Web page design will structure pages so that they are accessible to all.

In part 1 of this tutorial, we discussed page navigation, Web elements, and forms. Let's take what we've learned and think about some practical strategies we can use while surfing online.

Links.

The internet offers 2 main types of links:
  1. Same page links.
    2. and,
  2. Standard hyper links.
Same page links will move the focus to another spot further down the current page. to identify what kind of link we are dealing with, JAWS will announce "same page link".

Standard links, wehn activated, will open a new web page. Ideally, the link text will adequatley describe the page to which the link is pointing.
visually speaking, the link text is underlined. JAWS will announce all links when navigating through Web pages.

The Links List.

It might be very time consuming to read through a lengthy Web page, especially if you are simply looking for a specific topic, or even if you just want to get a general sense of the page.

This is where the JAWS Links List comes in handy. Activate the JAWS Links List with Insert F7. A list of all the links on the current Web page will open.
These are arranged in the same order they appear on the page. WE can scroll through this list with the Up and Down keys. We can also numonically access speicific links in the list.

For example, if we know that we are looking for a link titled, "World capitals", we could simply type the letter W, moving focus down the list to the first link that begins with the letter W, and so on. Pressing Enter will activate any of the links in the Links List , and will open the Web page to which the link is pointing.

The Move To Link button

The Links List has another useful feature. It is the "Move to link button". The Move to Link button will allow us to move focus to a link without activating it.
When would I use the Move to Link button?
That is a good question. I'm glad you asked it.
Sometimes links will not be very descriptive. In other words, the link text does not accurately describe the page to which it is pointing. A common example of this is the link simply labelled "more". More what?

pressing TAB, from within the Links List, will bring focus to the Move to Link button. Press the spacebar to activate the Move to Link button. The Links List will close and the cursor will now be at the place on the page where that Link is located.
Arrowing up or down at this point should offer better context to the link.

Note: Pressing ESC, also closes the Links List and returns focus to your place on the Web page.

Find Specific Text.

AS with most Windows based applications, we can easily look for specific text using Ctrl F. This is no different on Web pages. JAWS refers to this function as JAWS find. This is an extremely useful tool to add to your searching strategies.
If , for example, there is a specific word you think may be somewhere further down a page, use the JAWS Find keystroke to move to that place on the page.
  1. Press Ctrl F.
  2. The JAWS Find dialogue box will open. Type the word or text you are searching for.
  3. Press Enter.

General Web Surfing strategies.

Everybody has there own way of doing things. Surfing the internet is no different. One thing is certain though, the more you visit a Web site, the more familiar you will become with it's design, elements, layout, features, and styel. All this to say, a practical approach to becoming familiar with any new Web page is:
  1. Wait for the page to load and listen to JAWS identify the page title, the number of headings and the number of links on the page.
  2. If JAWS doesn't begin reading the page automatically, you can press Ctrl HOME to move the cursor to the top of the page and then press Insert Downarrow to have JAWS read from the cursor to the bottom of the page.
  3. If the page has been designed with page headings, you can get a sense of the page content by pressing H> the JAWS Quick key to identify Web page headings.
  4. To further explore the page in more detail, we can use the Links List, Insert F7.Or simply TAB through the page links.
  5. Other times it will be necessary to take the more pedestrian walk through the page by using the Up and Down arrows.
Note: To temporarily silence JAWS and have the cursor stop in place, press the Ctrl key.

The power of the internet is it's ability to search for almost any given topic. Weather you want to read about a famous person, find the telephone number for the local pet shop, download online music, find a new recipe, get the latest news from around the world, watch YouTube videos and so on, and so on, the possibilities are almost infinite.

In the next part of this tutorial, we'll use Google, as our search engine. you might want to even make Google your home page.

What's a Home page exactly?
I'ts the Web page that opens first for you when you start Internet Explorer.

There is a link on the Google page titled, "make google your home page".

The Address bar

is there anything else I should know before we get busy with google?
Wel yes, there is the Web address bar dialogue box.
What's that?
Okay, say you already know the exact name of a Web site and don't need to use Google to go searching for it. All you need to do in this case is open the address bar, type the URL, and then press Enter.

Open the address barfrom any location by using the following keystroek:
Ctrl O.
Note: you don't need to include the http part, or the www prefix of a Web address. For example, we need only type "cnn.com" to go to that Web page.

to advance to the next part of this tutorial:

  1. copy the web address located on the very bottom line of this Web page.
  2. Open the Web address bar with Ctrl O.
  3. Paste the copied Web address into the address bar.
  4. Press Enter.

Part 3 of this tutorial can be found at:
www.StacyBleeks.com/internet_with_jaws_part3.html