BBC History Guide

A guide for Jaws users, written by Chorlton Workshop for hsbp.

Introduction

This guide describes how to navigate some of the sections of the BBC History website, and how to read the articles which appear in these sections. The home page of the History website is not very accessible, so it's best to use another page as a starting point — for example, the Reading Room, which can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/history/reading_room/.

The BBC History website is one of the leading history websites. However, the accessibility of the site for users of screen readers varies quite alot from page to page. It appears that they're in the process of improving the accessibility, but have some way to go.

This guide only covers some sections of the website, and concentrates on finding and reading the articles which appear in these sections. Hopefully the information given will provide at least some help for exploring the other sections of the website.

The remaining sections of the guide are as follows:

• Page structure. The overall structure of the pages on the website.
• Reading Room. This page of the website provides access to a number of long articles, and is a good place to start exploring the site.
• Topics. This section describes how to navigate the part of the website which is organised by topic.

Page structure

This is the overall structure of most of the pages on the BBC History website:

• Skip to main content link.
• Navigation. This section contains links to the BBC Home page and the History Home page, followed by a number of sections. Each section consists of a level 5 heading and followed by a list of links. The sections are:
  • Topics
  • Resources
  • Practical History
  • Community
• Main content

Reading Room

The Reading Room page provides access to a number of long articles. You can get to the Reading Room by using its web address, which is www.bbc.co.uk/history/reading_room/. Alternatively, if you're already on the BBC History website (except on the home page), you can get there by:

1. Moving to the Resources heading.
2. Following the heading, there's a list of links. Find the Reading Room link, and open it.

This is an overview of the main content:

• Introduction
• Heading level 1: Inside the Reading Room.
• Two featured articles. For each article there's:
  • A link to the article page.
  • A brief description.
  • Printable version link.
• Heading level 5: Articles previously featured in the Reading Room.
• Combo box containing a list of the articles, followed by a Go button.

Reading a featured article

1. Move to the “Inside the Reading Room” heading.
2. Following this heading there are links to the two featured articles. The next link after each of the article links is a Printable version link. Open one of the Printable version links.
3. The printable version of the article opens in a new window, and then a print dialog opens. Press ESC to close the print dialog.
4. The title of the print version of the article is http://www.bbc.co.uk - “article title”.
5. When you're finished reading, close the window using ALT + F4.

An alternative way of reading one of these articles is to open one of the article links. You are taken to an article page, which contains a link to a printable version. Details are given in the Article page section below.

Reading a previously featured article

1. Move to the combo box which follows the heading “Articles previously featured in the Reading Room”.
2. Press ENTER to go into Forms mode, and select the article you want to read. Then press TAB to move to the Go button, and press it.
3. You are taken to the article page for the chosen article. The structure of an article page, and the easiest way to read it, are described in the next section.

Article page

The title of an article page is BBC History - “article title”

The articles are quite long, and to minimize the amount of scrolling for sighted users, the article is spread over a number of pages. Each main section of the article has its own page. When you follow a link to an article, you are taken to an article page which contains the first section of the article. At the bottom of a section there's a next link which takes you to the next page. The page also contains a series of links which can be used to navigate directly to the sections.

This is an outline of the main content of the first article page:

• Article title, which is a level 4 heading.
• Author
• Brief description of the article.
• Links to the main sections of the article
• Print this article link
• The first section of the article
• Next link, to the next page

Reading an article which is split over a number of pages isn't very convenient for screen readers. If you're reading using “read all”, then you have to listen out for the “next” link, and then backtrack and open it to move to the next page. You then have to navigate to the article on this page.

Fortunately, a printable version of the article is also provided. This is a single page which contains the whole article. This is far easier to read than the version spread out over a number of pages, and a description of how to use the printable version is given in the next section.

Reading an article

To read an article using the printable version:

1. Use the links list dialog to find and open the “Print this article” link.
2. The print version of the article opens in a new window, and then a print dialog opens. Press ESC to close the print dialog.
3. The title of the print version of the article is http://www.bbc.co.uk - “article title”.
4. When you're finished reading, close the window using ALT + F4.

Topics

This section describes how to navigate the part of the website which is organized by topic.

The topics are divided into a number of main sections: Ancient, Church & State, Science & Discovery, Science & Culture, and Wars & conflict. And each of these main sections is divided into a number of sub-sections. For example, the Ancient section has the sub-sections: Egytptians, Greek, British Prehistory, Romans, Vikings, Anglo Saxons.

You can navigate these sections and sub-sections using the list of links in the Topics section of the navigation. The links in this list are to the main sections of the topics. If you open one of these links to go to one of the main sections, then you are taken to the web page for the section, and on this page:

• The main content contains both brief descriptions and links to each of the sub-sections
• In the list of links in the Topics navigation section, following the link to the current section, there's now a nested list of links to the sub-sections of this section.

To navigate to one of the sub-sections, it's easier to use the nested list of links.

Navigation example

As an example of how to navigate the Topic section of the website, the following instructions describe how to get to the World War One sub-section of the Wars & Conflict sections of the Topics.

1. Move to the topics heading, which is a level 5 heading.
2. Following the heading, there's a list of links. Find the Wars & Conflict link, and open it.
3. You are taken to the Wars & Conflict section. The title of the page is “BBC - History - Wars & Conflict”.
4. Navigate back to the list of links following the Topics heading. There will now be a nested list of links below the Wars & Conflict link, which are links to the sub-sections of this section. In this nested list, find the World War One link and open it.
5. You are taken to the World War One sub-section. The title of the page is “BBC - History - World War One”. Details of how to find the articles on this page are given in the next section.

Topics sub-section page

The title of a sub-section page is BBC - History - “name of sub-section;”

Unfortunately, the main content has not headings. To find articles on the page, use the skip to main content link to move to the main content, and then start reading. There are often articles towards the beginning of this section. For the easiest way of reading these articles, see the Article page section above.