LibraryThing and JAWS

I like librarything.com. I think it's actually a very useful social cataloguing tool. I wish all cataloguing were quite so simple (remember I'm a librarian in disguise) and easy to follow. I've even got an account and started to catalogue my own collection - that way I may have a chance of finally remembering which Ellis Peters I have when I'm not in the house to check on the shelf.



So as a last test, I'm trying this out with JAWS. On the plus side when I went to the webpage, it instantly took me to the login so I could log in.



Some things about Librarything.com:

1. Columns: Sometimes JAWS doesn't work with columns very well. It often reads from left to right ignoring that the left hand column is a list of navigation links and that the right hand column is filled with information. You can get some interesting sentences that way! Although most of the columns seem to be tables, which makes navgating easier - T in the JAWS Quick Navigation will take you to the next table and tabbing will allow you to move through the lists. Ctrl+Inst+T will give a list of all the tables.


2. Tables: I mentioned Tables a bit above. I think I actually might be getting better at navigating through tables! Hurrah! I find it easier to listen to and navigate through it. There are not as many tables in librarything.com as there are in Facebook which is a definite bonus. It also seems much cleaner and easier to navigate around.


3. Alt text: Again there's no alt text for the book covers so you get a large string of numbers which makes you kind of wonder what on earth you're listening to. Still it reads out the columns well and the stars for reviews come out as "graphic star" which is a bonus.

All in all, perhaps it's a combination of my increasing navigation skills with JAWS, but I didn't find librarything.com too bad with JAWS, which proves that something simple can be beneficial to librarianship.

I've done what I said I would do earlier on in this blog and I'm going to take some time to mull over my experiences and blog some more about my general thoughts later on.