Let your mouse take five!
Why use shortcut keys instead of the mouse?
If you are blind you can use the computer just as well as anybody else. Only difference is that you don't work with a mouse. That is impossible if you are not able to see the screen, let alone the cursor. Instead you work with combinations of keys from the normal keyboard, so called short cut keys. For blind children this is a necessity but also partly sighted children often get the advise to forget the mouse and work with short cut keys instead. And if you have no visual impairment at all please note that to work with the short cut keys would also be very good for you. If you don't use a mouse, you'll never end up with a mouse-arm!
By the way, blind computer-users have the texts on a webpage read out to them by a screenreader. Or they use a special keyboard with their computer which displays all words in braille dots which they can feel with their fingers. Partly sighted computer-users usually use magnification software to magnify everything which is shown on the screen.
Navigating easily by use of short cut keys is only possible if the website has been built in an accessible way. There is nothing noticeably special about such a site, but technically it is constructed in a way that for instance you can use the TAB-key to jump from one link to the next. And all images have a textual description attached to them. It doesn't show, but a screenreader will read out the text and thus explain what is on the picture.
Would you like to make an accessible website yourself? A personal website which looks great, includes a guestbook, a newsletter and a poll, is easy to make, ready in no time and which you can give a completely different look in a second? Then apply for a free MaX account now, by sending an e-mail to max@sonokids.com. Include the webaddress you'd like for your site. All free accounts start with www.sonokids.com/ and after the / you can choose a word or a name.
