A Visually Friendly Web




From QST, October 1996, p. 24:

In the July QST, someone asked "The Doctor" why the World Wide Web is occasionally so slow. "The Doctor" gives a good explanation and sound advice--turn off image downloading. He also states that the ARRL Web site is designed with few graphics to make the data transfer as rapid as possible.

I am writing to say that this approach not only speeds up information transfer, but also helps a group of Net citizens often forgotten in the rush to produce ever-fancier (and, in my estimation, sillier) Web pages--the blind. Many blind persons (including me) still access the Internet via shell accounts and use the text-based browsers to do our web-surfing. Hence, we are overjoyed when we come across Web pages such as ARRL's which are easily read with speech or refreshable Braille displays, and which don't have an avalanche of image designators up and down the page. In other words, there's a side benefit to the way ARRL's page is organized: It's an easy read for us, the blind.

Mike Freeman, , Vancouver, Washington
mikef@pacifier.com


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