User Agent Support Notes for General Techniques

JAWS 5.0 and later includes the following keystrokes:

• alt+leftArrow: read previous sentence

• alt+rightArrow: read next sentence

• alt+NumPad 5: read current sentence

• Ctrl+NumPad5: read current paragraph

Window-Eyes 5.5 has hotkeys to read the current sentence and current paragraph.

To surf the internet with WindowEyes you must be in browse mode. Current sentence and current paragraph hot keys do not work in browse mode in version 6.1.

The Window-Eyes default settings for reading surrounding link context are as follows:

Desktop settings:

• Character = CTRL-NUMPAD-LEFT ARROW

• Word = CTRL-NUMPAD-RIGHT ARROW

• Line = CTRL-NUMPAD-CENTER

• Sentence = Not available in Browse mode

• (Next Sentence command is undefined by default on Desktop mode but the next line is the DOWN Arrow.)

• Next Paragraph = P

• Prior Paragraph = Shift P

• Current Paragraph = Not Available in Browse mode

Laptop

• Character = ALT-SHIFT-LESS THAN

• Word Prior = ALT-SHIFT-J

• Word = ALT-SHIFT-K

• Word Next = ALT-SHIFT-L

• Sentence Prior = ALT-SHIFT-7

• Sentence = unavailable in browse mode

• Sentence Next = unavailable in browse mode

• Paragraph = Undefined on Laptop by default

• Line Prior = ALT-SHIFT-U

• Line = ALT-SHIFT-I

• Line Next = ALT-SHIFT-O

Support for and mechanisms to enable user selectable secondary audio channel is not consistent across platforms and media players. Authors might not be able to rely on settings being at the platform or media player level and might need to provide an option to enable this in the content depending on the technology relied upon to make a conformance claim to ensure the technique is accessibility supported.

The Zoom functionality in IE 7.0 does not always scale uniformly when absolute positioning is used and the page is scaled smaller. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 supports both Zoom and Text Size changes for fonts set with %, em or named sizes.

Opera 9 supports Zoom.

Firefox 2 and below supports only text size changes, but can change the size of pt and px fonts as well as %, em and named sizes.

Firefox 3 supports both zoom and text size changes.

Most browsers allow the user to change the color settings to override Web author's CSS and HTML color schemes. This includes IE, all versions of Firefox, Mozilla, and Opera after version 6.

When specified colors are overridden in Netscape and versions of Firefox before Firefox 3.0, most Javascript pop-up boxes and drop-down menus become unusable. Pop-up boxes gain a transparent background, superimposing the text of the box on the text of the page, and drop-down menus either become transparent or gain a dark-grey background.

IE 6 will not override background colors in the browser unless the same background color has also been selected in the system settings.

There are no color settings in Safari so it is not possible to over-ride specified colors. Similarly where colors are not specified Safari displays the page in black text on a white background, ignoring any color preferences from within the system settings.