07 15 11 Submitting Comments, and Accessibility Issues with Blogspot.com

Steps for Commenting on Blogspot.

Hi Everyone.

My PC Guru Mike came to my house yesterday. I asked him to help me go through blogspot.com and try and figure out how to make it easier for people to leave comments on my page, as well as making it easier for me to leave comments on other people’s pages.

I have been hearing from some of my followers, as well as other people with pages, that they are finding it hard to leave comments. Mike and I took a couple of hours to try and come up with a solution. Mike was obviously the brains of the operation. He usually is.

Thanks for the help as usual, Mike. You rock.

Here we go.

First of all as the blogger, you need to go into your dashboard settings area on your blog page, and select the “comments” tab. In there, select who can leave comments to “anyone” This way; the confusion that seems to ensue with selecting ones user status from several different members’ lists is eliminated. We found that while trying to leave comments, blogspot kept asking for us to sign in under a selected list of groups, even though we were signed in already. This was confusing, and selecting the option so anyone can leave comments seems to skip this annoying process. Also check the box to give you email alerts when someone comments.

I realize that this eliminates any security steps as to who you allow to leave comments, and when you receive email alerts that someone commented, the emails are from “anonymous”. The person commenting can still sign the comment, so that you know who made the comment that is in the email alert, and in the comments area on the site itself.

Confused yet? Boy I sure was, am.

The comments page layout also matters as to how Jaws reacts. We found that the full page layout left us with an unaccessible “Post Comment” button that the regular Jaws pc cursor, and the Jaws cursor could not recognize. I am not sure if System Access has a cursor similar to the Jaws cursor, and this button may be accessible with S.A. in the full page style. I realize that sighted people will have no issues with this matter, as they can mouse click on the post button. I do, however, want to make my page accessible to anyone who chooses to view and leave comments.

We selected as the comment layout, “embedded below post” layout. With this layout, the “post comment” button became accessible with the regular pc cursor for Jaws. We are fairly certain that it should be also accessible for System Access cursors as well.

So here is a small description of what we do to leave a comment on my page with these criteria involved.

After reading blog, click on “0” comments, where “0” is the number of comments already listed. This will take you to the comments page where we have selected the embedded below post layout. Find the edit window below the blog post, and type your comment, remembering to sign it if you choose “anonymous” from the user list that ensues. When completing comment, tab once to the “comment as” dialog box,” Once in this box, page down once to get to the bottom of the list where “anonymous” will be automatically highlighted. The Anonymous choice is the last in the list. Once the “anonymous” option is highlighted, hit tab again. This selects the option, and precedes you to the “post Comment” button. Once you are at the “Post Comment” button, just hit enter to select and post your comment.

We found that by selecting “anonymous” from the list, eliminated any problems with having to sign in under a pre selected user name or group. As stated earlier, this became a problem for us, as it kept asking us repeatedly to sign in, even though we already were.

Like so many things, this seems very complicated until you get used to it. It is a 2 step process. The blogger’s steps. And the reader’s steps. I am sure that there are other ways to set up your blogspot site, as I am sure there are other ways to leave comments. We found these particular ways worked with our circumstances. I hope they may be of help to you, if you are having similar issues.

I still do urge people to sign up and become registered users of blogspot, so you can become followers of people’s pages. It is always nice to see how many followers you have following your page.

I am recently visually impaired, and am still learning the ins and outs of website navigation. I will get better with time, and I do appreciate the help of many people along the way.

I hope this helps anyone who has had issues with this process. From what I HAVE HEARD, THAT is JUST ABOUT EVERYONE.

Thanks and have a great day.

Deon

Dplyons.blogspot.com

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller