I’m learning what it’s like to navigate the web without the luxury of a mouse. Mine is currently being used to do a reinstall on the computer a desk over. We don’t really think about it much, but there are scores of people out there that, for one reason or another, don’t get to enjoy the ease of “point and click.” Some of them are blind, some are disabled and can’t use a mouse the way that most of us would, and I’m sure that there are other reasons that I haven’t even contemplated. Nonetheless, these folks get the tedious task of wading though the scores of links on a normal page (like CNN or eBay) just to get to the one link or text box that they want.

While writing this, I had to hit tab about 20 times just to get to the text box that lets me type anything. As I’ve been doing a whorde of web design lately, I’ve been working hard to make sure that my sites are easy to navigate and make sense to alternate browsers, like the text browser lynx or a braille reading browser. This little exercise has definitely shown me how important that really is. On google.com for example, I had to hit tab 11 times before I got to the first link. To get to each subsequent returned page, I had to hit tab another 4 times. I’m sure those that browse the web this way often have their own little tricks, but personally I wouldn’t have the patience to do it.

Anyway, I’m hard at work trying to get Katie’s dad’s computer back in line. I installed XP on it a few weeks back and a couple of days ago it decided to loose ntoskrnl.exe. For those non-tech-geeks in the audience, that is the file that runs the whole computer. Without it the computer won’t even start. I tried all the normal fixes for this problem but with no luck. So, through Farris’ generosity, I’ve installed a new hard drive and I’m installing windows fresh on it, with hopes of salvaging all of the data from the old hard drive once this is running.