Re: question for seasoned links users?
On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 10:51:16PM -0400, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> Hi folks,
> Does the browser have the ability to create a screenshot after a fashion?
> Need to document something for a site owner that will show for them, even if
> my screen reader presents it differently.
> Thanks,
> Karen
>
>
Hi Karen,
If I'm right, you have a visual impairment and you're relying on a screen
reader: you're the person who was also asking about reverse engineering
a DOS program a couple of weeks back, who is using WordPerfect and a Kurzweil
screen reading program?
I don't use links, though I have installed it to check. I normally use
elinks which is similarly capable. There's also lynx and w3m available
all of which will work in a console. I'm assuming you don't have a GUI,
have no use for a graphical browser - much of the advice from sighted
users may not be exactly relevant.
links does have the facility to dump the text to an output file.
You can force a dump of the page source, of the page as text (which
is close to what the screen reader will parse and includes alt-text
for images)
I'll use the BBC home page as an example because it should be well-formed
HTML, should have alt-text and be semantically correct :
links https://www.bbc.co.uk -dump > BBCfile
The -dump writes it to stdout (the output device, normally the screen)
The > character redirects the output to a filename, here BBCfile
This command produces the formatted text output.
links https://www.bbc.co.uk -dump -force-html > BBChtml
This is the HTML - it may not include alt-text comments and some styling
links https://www.bbc.co.uk -source > BBCsource
This is the whole thing, HTML, CSS, no formatting just a stream of data.
[It reads like robot vomit].
The first one should give a text file output of the web page which should be
readily understandable.
As far as the other browsers go, elinks is a later version forked from links
which seems to have more advanced document dumping commands. I only really
read the man page but could try more for you if you wish, since I often
use elinks to test pages in text mode.
If you run any of these commands to output to a file, then you can
just mail the file to someone.
I hope this helps - happy to help with more if I can (my day job involves
me in accessibility and screen reader compatibility is very much in my
future :) )
With every good wish, as ever,
Andy Cater
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