Back in the nineteen nineties, when the "World Wide Web," or just "Web" for short began to really become popular; information was mostly laid out in simple black and white text. Oh, and those were the good old days! Soon after, however, people became more adventuresome and, lo and behold.. Graphics appeared! Now graphics can represent links, (which take you from one page of information to another), or buttons, Etc.
This is all well and good if you are looking at the screen. But what if you are not looking at the screen, and doing something else? What if... Perhaps, you are blind, or visually impaired? Those graphics suddenly don't look so good, and in fact can cause headaches for many people. Sometimes these graphics have labels which make the information available to you even if you do not see the graphics, but often there are no labels.
What does all that have to do with C-SAW? Well, C-SAW is an acronym that stands for Community-Supported Accessible Web. What this means is if you have a tiny bit of knowledge about how the web works for you, you can be a part of the C-SAW community, and help make websites accessible to all... Just like the good old days! But remember, that you need very little knowledge to make this work for you. Also, the work that you do, will be instantly usable by all on the SA Mobile Network without any work being done on their parts.
Important, because C-SAW does require some basic knowledge relating to how web pages work, you will be required to take a tiny little test. This test will provide you a web site that has been purposely made inaccessible. This means that edit boxes aren't labeled, links, aren't labeled, and so on. Your job is to correctly label this page with C-SAW, and make it accessible. It doesn't take long, and it will get you familiar with the C-SAW process, as well as prove that you possess the knowledge to correctly, and accurately label web pages. remember, that this is a community supported effort, so we would like to see as many people as possible labeling web sites. This in turn will give our community that many more accessible web sites to enjoy! If you don't feel comfortable labeling web sites, please don't feel left behind. Again because this is community supported, once a web site is labeled, you need not concern yourself with labeling that web site. You will be able to use that web site in it's new usable form, without you , yourself working to make it happen. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get back to showing you how to take advantage of C-SAW!
Let's take a link for example. Remember a link just takes you from one page of information to another page of information. If a link is identified with a picture of a sunset and doesn't have a label, all you will hear when the link is read aloud is, "Link," or perhaps "Link" followed by some text that makes absolutely no sense what so ever! C-SAW changes all of that. C-SAW allows you to change items on a web page that are not accessible and re-label them so that they make sense to you. So that link that we talked about could be labeled as sunset. Or whatever is a meaningful description of the information represented. When you are all done with your changes, you can send it off to The SA Mobile Network C-SAW Repository, where they will be made instantly available to all SA Mobile Network users! Important, if you forget to send your changes to the C-SAW repository, you will lose all modifications that you have made to a particular web page. Also, no one else will benefit from your work. So, just remember to send your modifications in with the Modifier+S command.
When you use the alt+L command to label a link that is inaccessible, you will be presented with three pieces of information that will help you:
Once you've determined what you think the link should be labeled, you can tab to the edit box, type in your label, and press enter. The alt+L command can also be used to label buttons. In this case, only the first two items are shown.
If examining the above info doesn't help you come up with a suitable label, you can use the auto-labeler. This command is executed by pressing Modifier+A. It is strongly recommended that you use this only as a last resort.
A related problem is that System Access often cannot find the label associated with a form field, such as an edit box, list of choices, check box, or radio button. In this case, you should first locate the label by using the up and down arrow keys to look above and below the form field. Then, when you are in the form field, you can use alt+L to label it. When prompted, simply type the label and press enter.
Finally, when you are finished making your alterations, you can submit the information to the SA Mobile Network C-SAW repository, where it will instantly become available to everyone within the SA Mobile Network. To do this, press Modifier+S. From then on, whenever you or someone else on the SA Mobile Network accesses that same site, they will hear the C-SAW sound, indicating that the site to which they are visiting, has been made accessible via C-SAW!