The Most Important Keystrokes for Web Navigation

Module 7.1: The Most Important Keystrokes for Web Navigation The first thing to say about navigating the web with a screenreader program is that there is good news and bad news. The good news: if you can master about a dozen keystrokes, you are well on your way to being able to effectively navigate the web with all three browsers. The bad news: every website is different and exhibit varying degrees of accessibility. No matter how proficient you get with these and other keystroke combinations, some sites may be difficult or impossible to navigate because the web developer did not adequately take accessibility into account when designing the site. Another possibility is that sites were developed and tested using one or two browsers and not the others, leading to variations in accessibility.

• Headings and Heading Levels Preview (23 min)
• Links Preview (20 min)
• Find Command for Searching text (11 min)
• Form Fields (17 min)
• A Short Digression on Cursors (40 min)
• Tables (24 min)

Other Useful Keystrokes

Module 7.2: Other Useful Keystrokes

• Regions Landmarks (12 min)
• Non-Linked Text (6 min)
• A Few More Keystrokes (5 min)

What is Web Accessibility

Module 7.3: What is Web Accessibility? Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Internet, and that they can do so using the assistive technology tools at their disposal. For persons with little or no usable vision, that means using screenreader programs, sometimes in conjunction with refreshable braille displays. For those with varying degrees of usable vision, screen magnification programs like ZoomText, Fusion, and Windows Magnifier are the main tools.

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (23 min)
• Usability (20 min)
• The Future of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (5 min)

Options for Opening Web pages

Module 7.4: Options for Opening Web pages This module begins with a discussion of which page you want to land on when you first open your browser. we will then cover creating bookmarks/favorites and desktop shortcuts which are extremely useful for quickly accessing frequently visited webpages. For opening a browser, all three provide three options: open on a new tab page; open on the last page you were on during your previous session; or open a specific page or set of pages. The page or pages you choose are alternately called start or landing pages. If you pick one specific page, it may also be referred to as a homepage. For the sake of clarity, we will stick with the term “start page.” we will first explain the concept of Tabbed browsing. Then we will lay out the process of selecting yo

• Tabbed Browsing (22 min)
• Universal Method for Creating and Managing Favorites and Bookmarks (39 min)
• Creating Desktop Shortcuts (5 min)
• Chrome (7 min)
• Universal Method for Creating Desktop Shortcuts for Web pages (10 min)
• Creating Desktop Shortcuts To Be Opened with a Specific Browser (24 min)

Switching Browsers

Module 7.5: Switching Browsers It is easy to change your default browser, as well as to change browsers for a particular web page where you are situated.

• Changing Your Default Browser (17 min)
• Switching Browsers for a Specific Web page (9 min)

Menu Structure of the Browsers

Module 7.6: Menu Structure of the Browsers This module provides an overview of the menu structures of Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. You probably won’t spend lots of time in the various browser menus, but it’s good to know your way around. Once you open a browser, the lion’s share of your time is consumed by navigating to and browsing content. And you can use shortcut keys to perform many common commands, rather than navigating to them in the menus. Memorizing some of these keystrokes is well worth the modest effort because the most frequently used ones are universal across the browsers. Still, there will be times when you may wish to access the menus. You may wish to change some settings, create desktop shortcuts, bookmarks, or favorites, or perform some other functio

History

Module 7.7: History You can access a list of web pages that you have visited in recent days, weeks and months using Browsing history. You can also search and delete Browsing history. Accessing your Browsing history is useful if you want to quickly return to a recently-visited website or specific web page. Deleting your Browsing history is done primarily for privacy reasons, especially if you are using a public or shared computer. Control H is the universal keystroke for accessing Browsing history. Each browser displays history in different ways. Firefox presents a clearly laid out tree view structure for viewing History by date and site. Viewing History in Chrome and Edge by date and site is less well laid out. While each browser has different steps for deleting Browsing history, there

• Firefox (7 min)
• Edge (6 min)
• Chrome (8 min)

Extensions Add-Ons

Module 7.8: Extensions/Add-Ons These are small software programs that customize the browsing experience, adding more functionality for specific and limited tasks. Chrome and Edge call them extensions, while Firefox calls them add-ons. Popular tasks perform by extensions include blocking advertisements, enhancing security, screen customization, and correcting grammar and spelling. Many are available for more than one of the browsers. While there are literally thousands of extensions/add-ons out there, don’t go overboard with them. The vast majority do little to enhance your browsing experience, and many are inaccessible. Having too many running can also slow down your computer. Some have even been reported to introduce nasty malware and viruses. That said, there are a few extensions/add-on

• Chrome (16 min)
• Edge (10 min)
• Firefox (16 min)

Accessing and Changing Browser Settings

Module 7.10: Accessing and Changing Browser Settings Changing settings can be confusing because the exact sequence of keystrokes for accessing the various settings categories are not always intuitive, subject to frequent change, and are different between screenreaders. For a long time, once you opened the Chrome Settings tab, the various settings categories were nicely organized by heading. Navigation was easy and predictable. Unfortunately, the layout of the Settings tab was changed in Fall 2021 and navigation by category required a few contortions that we could only figure out with assistance from a sighted colleague. By contrast, some time in the first half of 2021, Firefox revised their Settings page so all categories could easily be navigated by heading, similar to how it used to be

• 01 Syncing Across Devices (9 min)
• Syncing Across Devices (9 min)
• 02 Chrome (6 min)
• 03 Edge (11 min)
• 04 Changing Your Startup Page (5 min)
• Changing Your Startup Page (5 min)
• 05 Chrome (19 min)
• 06 Edge (6 min)
• 07 Firefox (14 min)
• 08 Changing Your Default Search Engine (5 min)
• Changing Your Default Search Engine (5 min)
• 09 Chrome (6 min)
• 10 Edge (7 min)
• 11 Firefox (7 min)
• 12 Download Settings (5 min)
• Download Settings (5 min)
• 13 Chrome (12 min)
• 14 Edge (9 min)
• 15 Firefox (6 min)
• 16 Cookies (14 min)
• Cookies (14 min)
• 17 Chrome (9 min)
• 18 Edge (7 min)
• 19 Firefox (14 min)
• 20 Pop Ups (8 min)
• Pop-Ups (8 min)
• 21 Chrome (9 min)
• Chrome (9 min)
• 22 Edge (10 min)
• Edge (10 min)
• 23 Firefox (11 min)
• Firefox (11 min)
• 24 Clearing The Cache (23 min)
• Clearing the Cache (23 min)

YouTube

Module 7.11: YouTube YouTube is of course one of the most popular websites on the planet. You can access videos and accompanying audio for just about any topic imaginable. In this module, you can find some hints on how best to navigate the website, helpful quick keys for playing videos, getting descriptions of paused videos with JAWS PictureSmart, and an easy way to download YouTube video and audio files to your PC.

• Searching for and Playing YouTube Videos (37 min)
• Getting Image Descriptions with JAWS PictureSmart (21 min)
• Downloading YouTube Videos with MP3 Now (20 min)

Additional Useful Tools

Module 7.12: Additional Useful Tools This module identifies several more tools to enhance your browsing experience. They include copying and pasting hyperlinks, switching to reader views to reduce web page clutter, adding placemarkers, tips and tricks for copying text from the web without unwanted formatting, and a few others.

• Copying, Pasting, and Labeling Hyperlinks (24 min)
• Reader Views (5 min)
• Reader Views with Edge and Firefox (12 min)
• Reader Mode with Chrome (11 min)
• Placemarkers (6 min)
• JAWS (22 min)
• NVDA (11 min)
• Copying and Pasting text from the Internet (24 min)
• Saving Images from the Web (14 min)