Screen reader
If you are a screen reader user, when you operate some links or buttons, the page changes and you may find that the screen reader focus moves unexpectedly. You may find that you need to navigate through the page again to find where you wanted to be.
The list of discussions within a forum is presented in a table. The subjects of the discussions appear in the first column. It is possible to navigate through the subjects using the screen reader hotkeys for navigating down the column (in JAWS it is Control + Alt + down/up arrow).
There is also a 'Skip to first unread post' link towards the top of every forum discussion page (though only if there are unread posts and there is more than one post to skip).
All posts within a discussion are numbered; for example, ‘Post 1’, ‘Post 2’ and so on. The beginning of each post is a heading so it is possible to navigate from post to post using the screen reader hotkey for headings (in JAWS it is 'H').
When a post is a reply to another post, there is a link to the original post. For example if ‘Post 6’ is a reply to ‘Post 2’ there will be a link in ‘Post 6’ to ‘Post 2’ for easy reference.
Read and unread posts
Unread posts have a coloured background. Screen readers cannot easily convey this, so posts which are unread are indicated by the word ‘unread’; for example, ‘Post 2 (unread) in reply to 1’. The system cannot tell whether you have actually read a post or not, so ‘unread’ posts are posts that have arrived since you last visited that discussion. In other words, ‘read’ posts are posts that were present last time you visited the discussion.
You can navigate straight to the first unread message within a discussion from the list of discussions on the home page of the forum. The second column has the heading ‘unread’. If there is a zero in this column then all the posts have been read. If there is a number in this column, this is the number of unread posts in that discussion. The number is also a link to the first unread post in that discussion.
Flagged posts
If you find a post that you think you would like to return to at some point, you can use the ‘flag’ facility. This is a useful feature as it enables you to mark important posts that you may wish to refer back to at a later date. Underneath a post, there is a button labelled ‘Flag this post for future reference’. A list of all your flagged posts is provided towards the end of the first page of the forum, under the heading ‘Flagged posts’. You can remove a flag by operating the ‘Remove flag’ button. You can do this either in the list of flagged posts, or on the post itself.
Collapsed posts
When you return to a forum page, posts will have been ‘collapsed’ so that only the first line of each is visible. This will be indicated by the word ‘summarised’ after the post number; for example, ‘Post 2 (summarised) in reply to 1’. To read the whole post, use the ‘expand post x’ link at the end of each post. To expand all posts at once, use the ‘Expand all posts’ link towards the top of the page.
When all posts are expanded, you may wish to collapse all posts so that only the first line of each is visible. To do this use the ‘Collapse all posts’ link towards the top of the page.
Attachments
When other users attach files to posts, the attachment will be available via a link at the beginning of the post. The link will be the name of the file and will be preceded by an indication of the type of file; for example, JPEG image, PDF or Word document.