Hi Stacey, Yes, I've tried the readability plug-in and also the earlier bookmarklet. The older bookmarklet is faster and works better than the plug-in, in my opinion, and can be used more easily on iOS devices. This is basically another service like Safari Reader that originally developed from Marco Arment's Instapaper app. The idea was to provide distraction-free reading by only displaying text and images related to the article on a web page and it was originally implemented as a javascript bookmarklet. This offered a few extra features for low-vision readers over Safari Reader: you could select the contrast and font type as well as the font size, and you could choose the size of the text margins. I wrote up an extensive series of posts about this on the mac-access list back in February 2011, mainly because the topic started by a sighted user asking about ways to increase font sizes in web pages on iOS devices. There are various javascript bookmarklets that can do this.
If you want to find the Readability plug-in, you can get it from this URL: http://www.readability.com/addons Navigate to the "Download (It's free!)" link and follow the instructions on the web page for installing it. There is also a web page with their current bookmarklets, but it's badly designed so that when you navigate to the bookmarklet with a screen reader, your focus is not really on that element, and you can't bring up a contextual menu to download it. Furthermore, they've changed the javascript so that reformatting the page takes longer, mainly because they are trying to pull you back to their paid subscription service. If you want to use the earlier bookmarklet, go instead to this page named "Readabilitude": http://www.readabilitude.com/ 1. Use the Command-D shortcut to create a bookmark to this page, and VO-Space on pop up menu in the dialog window to the set the saved location to the "Bookmarks Bar". Type in any name you like for the bookmark (e.g. "Readability") 2. Navigate to the "Readability" link and use the context menu (VO- Shift-M) to "Copy link" 3. Command-Option-B to bring up the "Show all bookmarks" page 4. Navigate to the table of Bookmark collections with VO-Command-Shift- T (alternatively, you can press Command-F, and VO-Left arrow or Left arrow twice to the table) 5. Interact with the table and navigate to the "Bookmarks Bar" 6. VO-J to jump to the table of bookmarks in your "Bookmarks Bar". You'll be at the first entry (e.g. the "Readability" bookmark). 7. Bring up the context menu (VO-Shift-M) and select "Edit Address" 8. Paste in the link you copied from the web page with Command-V. (This inserts the javascript code for reformatting the page with text only into the URL address). 9. Command-Option-B to toggle out of the "Show all bookmarks page" You now have a "Readability" bookmarklet on your bookmarks bar. To use it, go to some web page with an article mixed in with graphics and/ or adds. Press Command-1 to launch the bookmarklet. This should work like the Command-Shift-R shortcut of Safari Reader. However, you'll find this bookmarklet works on some pages where Safari reader does not. You'll also find in some forum pages that the Readability bookmarklet will let you read comments, where Safari reader will not. There are other gains for low vision users. They can select radio buttons on the "Readabilitude" web page to select the size of font, background contrast, and margins, so that the reformatting gives them a more comfortable reading contrast, that also does not invert colors. In addition, if they select wide margins, they'll need to do less panning while they read if they use a zoom. On an iPad, if you sync bookmarks and configure your settings for Safari to set the switch for "Always Show Bookmarks Bar" to "on", you can flick to this bookmark and double tap it to apply the javascript. HTH. Perhaps a low-vison user can try out the plug-in and report back. My own experience from last year is that both the plug in and the newer bookmarklet worked considerably less well than the bookmarklet I listed above. There were similar complaints from users on the TeleRead pages about the degraded performance of the Readabllity plug in and newer bookmarklet after Readability tried to market this as a paid service, so I don't think I was alone in this conclusion. See comments in "RIP, old Readability bookmarklet; I will miss you" February 26, 2011 at: http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/rip-old-readability-bookmarklet-i-will-miss-you/ Cheers, Esther On Nov 21, 11:33 am, Stacey Robinson <stacey...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > Hi, > Has anyone ever heard of this safari plug in. Read ability. > It's supposed to make web pages easier to read. > Someone mentioned it on mainmenu. > How do I find plug ins for safari and install them? > Thanks, -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
