All About Access

This very afternoon, my supervisor received the following question by email:

Is there a phone book on the computer which is accessible with JAWS? How do you use it? We are not allowed to use Directory Assistance at work so I need an alternative.

The timing of this question couldn’t be better! After all, it’s Yahoo Week at All About Access, and Yahoo has accessible phone directories.

Yellow Pages at Yahoo

If you want to look up the phone number for a business, go to yp.yahoo.com. You will of course need to type in the name of the business—or the kind of business—you are looking for. You may also need to specify/change the geographical location being searched. Here’s what I would do:

1. See if a geographical location is already in effect by down arrowing from the “Your Search” edit box.
   
2. If you find that the correct location has been selected, go to step 3. If instead you find that no location—or the wrong location— has been selected, tab to the “Change Location” link and press Enter. On the resulting page, you will find several form fields:
   
   
   
   • The “Saved Locations” combo box
     
   • The “Address (Optional)” edit box (note, your screen reader may just say “Optional”)
     
   • The “City & State or Zip” edit box
     
   • The “Country” combo box
     
   • The “Continue” button
     
   If you regularly search Yahoo Yellow Pages, the location you need might be in the “Saved Locations” combo box. If not, type the City and State, or the Zip, and verify the country. When you are finished specifying your location, press the “Continue” button. This will bring you back to the Yellow Pages search page.
   
3. Move to the edit box labeled “Your Search” (not the one labeled “Enter Search Terms Here”). Enter Forms Mode, type the name of the business, and press Enter to execute your search.

4. Move to the table that contains the results. If you move to it by pressing the quick key T, JAWS should announce “Business name”. This table is arranged in three columns: Column 1 contains the business name and the phone number, column 2 contains the street address, and column 3 contains the miles from the location you specified earlier. The way I typically navigate this table using JAWS is to stay in column 1 and move down row by row using Control Alt Down Arrow. That way, I don’t have to hear the address and distance for each business. When I find the row I am interested in, I move column by column using Control Alt Right Arrow and Control Alt Left Arrow.
   

Finally, if you cannot remember the URL yp.yahoo.com, you can always go to www.yahoo.com and follow the “Yellow Pages” link.

White Pages at Yahoo: People Search

If you want to look up the phone number for an individual, go to people.yahoo.com. Unfortunately, the People Search form could be labeled better. If you have JAWS 6, you can use the Custom Label feature to solve this access problem. If you don’t…. Well, after I finish this entry, I’m going to send feedback to Yahoo. This should be an easy fix for them. And I apologize for not being aware of this problem. I search the Yellow Pages all the time, but not the White Pages. In the meantime…

There are four form fields related to searching for an individual’s phone number and address. I have listed them here in tab order, along with how they appear in JAWS’ “Select a Form Field” dialog box:

1. the “First Name/Initial” edit box (Unlabeled1)
2. the “Last Name” edit box (Unlabeled2)
3. the “City/Town” edit box (Unlabeled3)
4. the “State” combo box (Unlabeled4)

If you do not have JAWS 6, get into the “Select a Form Field” dialog by pressing Insert F5, navigate to Unlabeled1 and fill out the desired fields keeping the above tab order in mind. Hopefully Yahoo will fix this access issue soon. On the other hand, if you do have JAWS 6, label them yourself. To do so, navigate to Unlabeled1 and then press Control Insert Tab. Type the label you want (like “First Name/Initial”) and press Enter. Repeat this process for the other three fields.

As with the Yellow Pages, the results of a Yahoo People Search are contained in a table. You can navigate the People Search results pretty much the same way as the Yellow Page results, although the layout of the People Search table makes doing so somewhat tedious. So here’s a little trick I’ve found helpful: Use JAWS quick key T to navigate to the results table. Then use quick key U to navigate to the next unvisited link—which should be the first individual’s name. If it’s not, you’re probably not in the correct table. From the first individual’s name, use quick key S to move to the next “same element.” This seems to skip you over things like advertising links and bring you to the next person. Keep pressing S to move forward person by person, and use Shift S if you need to backtrack. When you find the right person, use JAWS table reading commands to access the address and phone number.

Finally, if you cannot remember the URL people.yahoo.com, you can always go to www.yahoo.com and follow the link named People Search.
—jd

This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2005 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Web Access. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.