[Test carried out 2005.01.28 15:28]
So I get into Internet Explorer.
So I pressed a keystroke for Open. Now I’m pressing a key just to review that I typed what I want [then left-arrowing through].
I would press the Ctrl key to silence speech unless I wanted to hear the Web site. If it was the first time I visited a Web site, I might want to hear the whole thing. Because Jaws will read all the 120 links on the site [and she might not want that]. [Go ahead.] I’m listening through the whole thing even though it has a Skip to Main Content [link].
I think I would assess what exactly I want to do on this site, so I might press N to check if there is any text in there or H if there’s headings.... I kind of have a sense of what the site does now. It’s listing all the software it sells... Cycling through the headings. “Signup.” I’m just kind of jumping around from new text to new headings and just seeing what else is in there. OK, “New in Technology.” OK. So I’ve sort of gone through the whole thing and reached the bottom.
And my next impulse if I wasn’t doing the survey would be just to go back to normal Web browsing because I don’t know if this would apply to me if I could get this stuff somewhere else. It looks – definitely a business Web site.
I press Ctrl-Ins-Home and find the first form field, and then I would see that it’s “Search Products.” I’d press Ctrl-Ins-Tab and it’s giving me a combo box of “All Products.” I’m not finding a form field for login so I’m pressing F7, “list of links,” and press L until I find login. And I’m not finding “login,” so I’m going to go back to the top and cycle through all the links I’ve heard. Oh, “Sign-in”! There’s a sign-in right at the top. [Then cycles through below to check if there’s anything else, Shift-Tab to go back to sign-in, Enter on sign-in] I’ve gone about 10 links into it and I’m thinking, this is taking too long, so I’m going to press N and see if I can get anything. Nope. ... Then I’ve gone back to the top because my little N-N-N isn’t showing anything. [Hits the Sign-in button. Tells Windows not to remember password.]
Sometimes this screen reader will stop at graphics at the top of the page. It’s stopped at “sign out,” because it’s found a graphic at the top of the page. OK, so what’s this all about then?
Aha! “Update your E-mail!” [She presses Ins-F7, then U till Update is selected. N will take too long, so she presses Ctrl-Home to find Skip to Main content again; then found My Account. Presses Enter to turn forms mode on, then asks what E-mail address to use] Wait, I’m going to make sure it’s just right. OK, it didn’t write over, it didn’t delete the other E-mail, which sometimes they do. So I’m going to make sure I delete the other E-mail. “Submit.” Spacebar to submit it. So now it’s at account settings. “Thank you. Your request has been sent. Your account is a quick way to store preferences,” etc.
Go back to the top of the Web site, Ctrl-Home, and then tab a few times and see where I am. Then I’m going to go H for headings and see if I can find something about products. Ah, “Heading level 3: Search products”....
I think what I might start with is now that I’m at this edit field, I might write in “mouse.” You mean if I want to locate general mouses before I located “mousing surfaces”? [Types mousing surfaces; then hits Ins-8] to see if I have it right, and then I’m going to locate it in All Products because I found on Web sites if you specify it too carefully you tend to miss it.... I think I want All Hardware.
So it’s saying “Enter keywords” again. I’m just going to arrow down again and see if there’s any search results because it’s got me to another combo box. I’m just going link-link-link until I find something about search results, and so far I haven’t found them. [But the mousing surfaces are on screen! Does much listening and repeating what Jaws says] OK, two results for mousing surface it’s found. So I’m just kind of scrolling through what they’ve told me about mousing surfaces and deciding what link to... It’s got all kinds of serial numbers. So add to cart. I’ve read through everything and I guess I could [press Enter] on “mousing surface” to get a better description of it, but I suppose I want to add it to cart.
[Even though she’s ahead of experimenter, does Ins-F7 then M-M-M until she gets to mouse pads] I’m just going to make sure that there isn’t another link for it. So there it is. I’m going to press Enter on “mouse pad.” There are seven things with “M,” so that’s easy. So I’m re-pressing Skip to Main Content again. There we are! So now we’re back to the result for “mousing surface” again.
OK, I don’t... I don’t need to select it exactly. I just need to add it to my cart. I don’t see a checkbox anywhere. Oh, hang on, yes, I do. There is a checkbox above the mousing surface but it’s not on the same link per se as the mousing surface; it’s got its own checkbox. You have to arrow down from the link that says “checkbox not checked” when tabbing. [Presses space on checkmark. Had to “go back and forth, Tab/Shift-Tab to make sure I’ve done the right thing.” Voice stops, so she arrows down to find out if there’s any more Web site.]
So it’s got this whole Web site. “My items have been added to my cart. View my cart”: I don’t think I have to. It says it’s a table, but typically I wouldn’t bother to read it the way you’d read tables with Jaws. I’ll just arrow down and read it. OK, it actually works as a table. This site’s pretty good. You can actually read the column headings and the information under the columns. I don’t know whether they’re in columns or in rows, but I read it fine if I go across it.
I’m going to just do my regular search thing where I go Ctrl-Ins-Home and I’m gonna put “game controller.” All products. Search. So I’ve just gone to the search edit thing and gone to that. So I’m going to see if it will give me a... I’m going to see if I can press N to get down to my test with my search results. So it goes through another whole thing, the hardware, the software. Here we are, I think. So it’s got all sorts of game controllers here.
Let me see. Let me see if it’s in a table here. Not in a table. OK. See if there’s any option it gives me – sort them according to price. Let’s see if I can. “Filter your search.” [Misses it!] “Search within results.” “Game controllers.” So I’m just arrowing up and down in around in here. “Search within results. Radio button checked.” I’m going to just tab. Let me see if it’ll let me... Oooh. OK, game controller. “Filter your search.” OK, let me see. It’s giving me the option to search within my search results, but— let me see.
“View products.” OK, here we are. OK, five results for game controller. Ah. OK. Found a combo box finally down the page where I can sort by – I’ve pressed Enter on the combo box for best options and... Oh, here we are. “Price low to high,” “price high to low.” I’m going to do a “price low to high” to see if I can find a... So this time it very helpfully brought me to the main window of the Web site because of the version of Jaws and the version of Internet Explorer that I’m using. Sometimes it does this and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s nice to see. ...And I see that it’s got it in a table so I’m down to the row where it lists the game controller and the prices and so on. [Ctrl-Alt-rightarrow to move cells] I have found the price column. I’m going to keep in my tables reading mode by holding Ctrl-A and press downarrow through the prices. So I could compare what they each do. So what should I do? [Restated question]
“Welcome.” “Skip to Main Content link.” “View cart.” OK, now it’s showing me two products. I’m just verifying that I’ve gotten my contents correct. Yep. It’s got them both.
Mm-hmm. OK. I guess I can do it two different ways. I’m going to go to the top again and see if by pressing the H key, hardware and software, it’ll get me— it doesn’t seem to have it on that particular— [it does!] So I’m going to press Alt-leftarrow and go back a page on the main searching page and see if it has hardware and software. Oh! Oh, oh, I know what I’ll do. I found another choice of searching products in— oh, I can’t, that’s a keyword-searching thing. “Brands – Adobe.” Oh: Hardware.
I guess it has quick links, I’m discovering [that is, accesskeys]. Hardware is Alt-3, and let me see. Oh, software is Alt-4. So I’ve just discovered that it’s got these quick keys for hardware and software. It just says “Link Software Alt-4.” And it might even have a list of those at the top of the page, but I tend to forget them when I read them, so I use them when they’re applicable.
[Has Jaws set to advanced, that is, most-limited verbosity. “I really just take out as much of the extra speech as I can.” Characters set to none, no punctuation, no formatting changes – “well, some; depends.”]
OK, well, it is Alt-3, I remember it said, so I’m gonna try that. I press Alt-3, it brought me to that link, so now I press Enter, I guess. And it’s – and now it’s stopped. I’m going to Skip to Main Content again. OK, here we are. “The smartest way to buy hardware.”
Normally I would just go into the Edit → Search window and type into the word keyboard and I would find it, but there are probably other ways of doing it too, like tabbing through this entire hardware list and finding the IBM keyboard if I didn’t know the exact name.
[Thinks it’s faster to go “IBM French Keyboard” in the search window] H to get to heading and see if I can find my search results here. Keywords. Yeah, there it is, my keywords are there. OK, so it’s got my keyboard and it’s the only one that’s listed. It’s a USA French keyboard, which would be kind of interesting, I suppose. Yep, it’s the only item, which I discovered by Ctrl-Alt-uparrow and -downarrow.
Could go in the combo box and search within the category results [or just search, as she did; or tab through the hardware page and find the link listing keyboards]. [She named those categories, and remembered the keyboard link before. “It had mousepads, it had keyboards, it had all sort of things.”]
“Add to cart” button. There we are. [Immediately done!] I like that Skip to Main Content button. I think it’s good. There it is. My cart. Three products and I’ve only spent $92.
I’m looking at the results page for my cart, and I want to go to checkout, so I’m going to tab, and see if there’s a checkout option. If the only way to check out is to view my cart first, I’ll do that.
OK, why is it giving me these “checkbox not checked” [errors]? The one thing about this Web site is that there isn’t anything alongside the checkbox, so I don’t know if it wants me to remove it or not. [Does a lot of listening and ruminating] I don’t know what the “checkbox not checked” is all about. So I’m just going to keep going and assume it has something to do with remove or something like that. Oh, delete selected items; so finally at the end it says delete selected items, and I’m not going to choose to delete [any]. So it looks like to go to the checkout I have to choose all these delivery options. Oh, here’s checkout! I see [a] Checkout button. Here we go. So I’m pressing— anytime I get to a Web site I press Ctrl [to stop speech] because it goes through the whole 80 links of the Web site unless you Skip to [Main] Content.
I would tab to where it says “enter credit-card information” and just enter it. ... I would just press the Enter key to get into the form field and then just enter my credit-card information. Oh, except that it hasn’t said a “secure” thing. [Asked for more] There’s nothing on here that says in speech that there’s a little deadbolt or whatever on the site, which means it isn’t a secure website, so I might not enter my credit card anywhere.
Just a second. I held down something too long so I have to find out what I did. [An alert box is on screen. She dismisses it.] I would select my card type by pressing Enter on the combo box for Select Card Type, and then I would arrow down until I found Visa, and now I’m going to tab to the next field where it has a card number. Long process; probably a whole lot easier with a mouse.
It’s going to say “CID password” and I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s the three numbers on the back. “More information about ‘sid.’ ” C-I – “card ID,” I suppose. But it’s not telling me more information about what CID is.... I would probably just give it a shot and enter my verification code on the back, the verification code that’s right next to the number on the back of the card that isn’t tactile. Each card has its own security verification code. I would enter that and hope that’s what it wanted. And if it wasn’t correct, I’m sure they would tell me.
So I’ve done that just by arrowing up and down and finding the appropriate numbers on the—
Yes, first name. Last name, but it doesn’t say last name. It just says “First, type in text” and then “Last, cardholder text.” [Switches to Jaws cursor] When I read it with the Jaws cursor, not with the PC cursor, it does tell me that the order goes first last and postal code. .... Oh, now it says “enter last.” “First.” “Edit.” Something. Nothing. “Last. Last.” So I guess the middle initial doesn’t even show up when you’re reading it with the Jaws cursor. You have to guess that’s what they want, I suppose, if you put your middle initial on your credit card.
It seems like you have to delete what you’ve got before you can put in the last name. It doesn’t tell you it’s keeping the information it had before.... I’ve noticed [that same thing before] on this Web site.
“More information about CID.” Oh, there’s the CID. Maybe I should go there and find out. OK, I think I will. Because they seem to need some – maybe they don’t; maybe they don’t care. “P.O. Box”? Let me go into the Jaws cursor.
So now it’s telling me that I’m going to a nonsecure site, like I was on a secure site before and now I’m not. So it’s asking me do I want to continue; I guess I do. [Much later] Oh, I must update quantities before I complete my checkout. ... OK, I’ll update it. Now it’s at “Summary: Cart content.” OK. I’ve updated it. OK, so now it’s asking me to choose a delivery destination. 10 Canadian dollars. Yeah, I already did this. Checkout. OK, what’s the problem? I already did this..... I guess I’ll just press the checkout again and see if it’s— I did this already. What’s going on? [More listening] OK, so it’s giving me a bunch more things. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand— OK, for some reason it didn’t like what I did before so I guess I’m gonna have to redo all of this. It didn’t tell me what it didn’t like. Sometimes Web sites will tell you you didn’t give them such and such a bit of information, so you have to— [Ctrl-Ins-Tab through to find fields she needs to reenter] OK, I have to redo all this credit-card nonsense. Visa. Do I have to redo it? I have to redo it. I can’t believe it. [And she does redo it!]
Got to take out his [last name], because it’s gonna keep it in. Maybe I’d better check on this “more information on CID” because it seemed to not like something. I’m trying to find something that tells me about this CID thing quickly, and I’m doing my Skip to Main Content again. OK, payment. There we are. OK. Oh, there it is. OK. ... OK, I found out what a CID number is with my Alt-leftarrow. I have to again find my credit-card fields. [Ctrl-Ins-Home, then Ctrl-Ins-Tab Ctrl-Ins-Tab “to see if I can get to that credit-card field”] And it’s not letting me go to it.
Let me see. OK. I’ve lost it. I’m going to the window for “What is a customer identification digit,” or whatever, “credit identification digits,” I’ve misplaced the window with my order. [Checks and finds it’s another window on her screen] I’m going to try going to My Orders, because I can’t find the window that had all my CC information. OK, I’m going to saved carts just to see if they’ve got something. ... “Six items”? Ah, I see, this is all the different E-mail... OK, that’s me, I guess. January 25. Oh, no, we’re not... OK, so this is going backwards. I’m trying to look through these saved carts because I can’t find my file. “11... 13...” OK, we’re getting there. “15... 5/31/2004.” OK, so it does work. [Moves back in browser with back button] I’ve finally found my credit-card information.
[Puts in CID] I thought when it said “Edit order button,” I thought it was Jaws giving me the kind of link it was, like “Edit” and then “order button.” [Later found the Buy Now button.] OK. I got to the place where it says “Thank you for choosing blahblah.” So I think it processed my order.
Either search for each of them individually and compare their characteristics individually, or if they were two of the same kind of thing, go into a search for a generic term that would encompass both of them and then go in and examine their individual attributes.
OK, I’m going to do my usual thing. Go to search products edit... Go into forms mode and put “wireless routers.” All Products. Search. Oh. Zero products. So now it’s telling me what I can do to improve my search. OK, I’m going to go back to my search criteria again, Ctrl-Ins-Home, and put “routers.” Or just put “router.” Or “wireless router.” [Does this last] See if I can find my search results by pressing H or N or something.
OK. So it’s found my stuff. Oh, gosh. It seems to have 68 routers listed so I think what I’ll do is go into the link that says Bridges and Routers....
OK, I better go into “wireless router” again because that seems to narrow it down a little bit. So it gave me the choice. ... Arrowing up till I found the wireless routers again. And there’s a couple of people here who only have one each, so I’m going to take the ones on the bottom, Trendware [and press Enter on each and look at the description of each]
I see a link here that says “compare,” so maybe I’ll hit on that and see if it gives me a choice to compare another one. And it doesn’t. [Needs more than one item to compare; she goes to a brand that has more than one.] US Robotics sells two; so let’s see, compare them. “Compare.” OK. “All.” “Sorted by.” Gosh. Just a second. OK. So I found the price thing again, but it seemed I had to compare two by the same manufacturer or else it won’t let me do it. So it said “low to high,” so I guess this 802.11G whatever whatever Wireless Turbo Router must be least expensive because I had it tell me “low to high” in the price-range-sorting combo box.
I think I would press Ins-F7 and press L until I found a logout button if I could do it. [Was going to press Alt-F4.] Oh, “sign out.” Here’s a signout link at the top. I didn’t think about “signout.” So I’m going to press Enter on “signout.”
[Ends: 16:38. Duration: 1:10.]
It was quite interesting. It actually made me do more in quick succession than I would normally do, depending on how committed I was [to the product]. [Tends to pick away and not give up. “I might go get a cup of tea in the meantime, but yeah, I’d keep at it.”] It wasn’t a hard Web site. And the things I did wrong turned out to be my errors. There wasn’t anything wrong with the Web site.
No, they were quite good. They sort of tested what they needed to test, though I must say my way of getting information didn’t change each time. I found that the most efficient way of getting the information you’re looking for is just to go to the search field.
[On the topic of tabs] It would have been easier to find the tabs if they weren’t just a link – like if they were a heading or if they were set apart from the other information, because sometimes that kind of information is helpful when Jaws will give it. It’ll say “Heading, Level 3, ‘Hardware’ tab.” ... In my estimation... Unless there’s a way of putting it at the very top... It’s easier to just go to search, or just press Ins-F7 and just press H-H-H-H until you find Hardware.