Trouble Shooting Web Pages
Web pages are great when they work and are accessible. Sometimes this is not the case. A web site may be completely inaccessible, or only parts of it are accessible. One prime example of accessibility issues comes in the area of "Flash." When you encounter Flash, it is a graphical representation of printed materials, and often has accompanying pictures or graphics. Companies often use Flash as a means to write and teach employee skills. Training for employees can be in a Flash format that is not accessible to the screen reader. Modern screen readers have addressed some of the graphical text issues with built in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) capabilities. This works in some cases, and not in others. Knowing your screen reader well is an essential in approaching Flash. One strategy, where possible, has been to print out the Flash material and then scan and read it via OCR. This can be time consuming, and should be considered as a last resort.
There are very busy web pages, with graphics and other items all over the page. If the web site you are working with has a mobile version, use that. For example, www.cnn.com is a very busy web page. Try using m.cnn.com to see if it works better for your needs.
Screen readers and screen enlargers can sometimes freeze, or do things they are not supposed to do on a web page. You may need to shut down the screen reader or screen enlarger and restart it. Web pages can sometimes lock up or freeze. One approach is to hit the F5 key one time to refresh the screen. Most screen readers have another option where you can clear out the screen reader and page memory with a key command. You will want to research your screen reader to see if it has this capability, and if so, how you can use it.
Sometimes you will need to close your web browser and restart it. Some web browsers do better than other web browsers on certain web pages. It is wise to have more than one web browser on your computer. Two very common web browsers are Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. If a page does not work on one of these browsers, try the same page on the other browser.
If all else fails on accessing a web page that you really need, try rebooting the computer. If this does not help, you will probably need to seed sighted assistance to determine what is happening on the screen. It might be that the web page is ma-functioning, or maybe there is a box that the screen reader is not accessing with important information about the web page.