Websites are designed for the visual surfer. Sites are designed so that one's eyes can randomly access any part of the page. Mechanical web readers cannot complete this random access task, but rather progress sequentially through the page. Thus, these readers using assistive browsing tools must go through every single link until the user arrives at the section they want. When they go to the next page they must go through all the steps again.

A prime example of this problem is to be found on news websites like CNN.com. A screen reader would read the links in the left hand column first, spending a few minutes to complete this task, and then continue with the content. The content area of this site begins with the top stories and is followed by subsequent categories, such as sports, business and world news.

If users want to see the third story in the education area they must scroll through the entire site to get to the education area, and then scroll through the education page to get to the third story.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (or "WAI") guidelines suggest the use of "skip links" for major group of links. This involves repeated skipping until the user arrives at the desired location. This is only slightly better than having to read through the entire site. For a site as large as CNN.com, even skipping links repeatedly can be time-consuming.

Users are not given an overview of the whole page. They are often not aware of the following sections until they get there, thus making their search more difficult and time-consuming.

UB Access presents a standardized solution to faster access for the visually impaired -- Page Map ^TM . This provides a standardized map of the page, whereby visually impaired users can click on a standardized access key to reach a particular section of any website. For instance:

Alt-0- Page map Alt-1 - Start of the page Alt-2 - Main content area of page Alt-3 - Main navigation bar Alt-4 - Right hand column if it exists Alt-5 - Bottom footer area Alt-6 - Link to "Contact Us" page Alt-7 - Link to the UB Access Help page Alt-8 - Link to the UB Access Accessibility Feedback Form. Alt-D - Link to Long description page. *

* (This page provides a description of graphic elements in the website, the function of various access keys links, etc.)

How Does it Work?

This standardized set of access keys would accompany every page in an accessible site. In addition, a content-specific page map would be resident on each page describing the content, and providing alt-links to different content sections on that page. This map would be different for each web page.

The CNN.com example

The CNN site would have a content specific page map on the main page, whereby there would be a separate Alt key for each news section (world, politics, entertainment, etc.). By using one of the keys, the browser would "jump" to that section. On the page with the story there would be a page map linking alt keys to section for related stories, related sites, and other links provided parallel to the story.

PageMap ^TM as a standard:

It is hoped that the format presented by UB Access will become the worldwide standard for page maps on accessible websites. By making PageMaps ^TM the standard, accessibility will be made easier for the user as well. As soon as there is an indication that a site uses PageMap ^TM , user will know which standardized access keys to use in surfing the page.