As I said cw, it's important to remember that the method by which a fully sited person reads is entirely different to using a screen reader. Rather than hereing something progressively word by word, a sited person will simply scan the page visually and stop on important parts, or get a general sense of the entire content of a page of text by visually picking out random bits.

I have absolutely no idea how this might work, (the very thought of getting information like that is very alien to me), but that's why coloured highlighting text is used, to make the skim reading process easier.

Obviously for hereing with a screen reader, sinse the mental process is different, there's no need to replicate the information specific to the skim reading process, ---- in fact as I said, it would be rather annoying!

Saying that though, it might be good if more information could be presented in a coherent textual way for people using screen readers, ---- for example using text messages instead of colours in the logd game eg: 35-35, okay, 20-35, wounded, etc, as in fact Sryth does with the coloured boxes in combat which represent the strength of the various enemies.

It's been tried, the best chance is usually if one person sends a polite email it seems. Bombarding them with emails is rather counterproductive.

Flash can be a problem period, whether flash only or not. Also really weird mouse related java or java script, and of course those pages which insist on refreshing every 5 seconds. My router has one of those for its status and it is the only part of its interface I actively avoid.

Hmmm, the refresh thing used to be a nightmare with previous versions of Hal, but from about 6.5 onwards it's not been so bad. If it's causing trouble Cx2, isnt' there the option to disable it in Jaws? Hal certainly has had the ability to do that from V5 onwards, and I'm sure I remember when this question came up before there was also a way to do it in jaws.

I'm also interested to know why your router is showing it's status constantly?

then again, I'm lucky enough to have a full home hub dsl system (it's my biggest monthly bill|), so I'm probably slightly spoiled as far as connection goes.

I don't find popups quite as much of a problem, in fact if they are disabled, useful stuff such as file download boxes does not appear, which is a pain.

I'd fully agree on those blasted java script links though. the Ferian space adventure game was made totally unplayable by those, sinse all the links for the in game objects read as "java zero" when i examined them in Hal.

apparently version 9 has had a few net navigation tweaks as well, so I'll be interested to try some less accessible sites again with it, ---- such as the lands of hope game.

To get back on track with the colours and perception issue, one thing I was discussing with a friend today, is something I think of as immotional resonance.

it's the ability to tell how a person is feeling, but not by tones of voice, sounds of body language or anything else. If there's a long silence in conversation for example, it's the ability to know that a person is either upset, or bothered about something even if their not speaking.

It's a sense I often get about people, even though as I said, I can't do facial expressions, and can only do very extreme forms of body language which are audible anyway, ---- eg waving arms around or stamping.

i'm not sure if this resonance thing is just my mind making conclusions from all available data or something else. My friend (who's a doctor of bio chemistry, and a qualified humanistic counceler), actually thinks it's something to do with theramones and picking up scent clues, but i'm not sure.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or is it just my crazy mutant telepsycho-empathic extra sensory  mind powers! buahahaha of doom!

you! wil bnring me some orange sher! bert! 

(appologies to anyone who hasn't seen the austin powers film so doesn't get the above reference).