Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

At Ouch, we hate inaccessible websites. Especially ones all your friends are chatting on and that let you know about that party you've been invited to tonight. I talk of course of the website that knows all your friends, even those you'd rather forget.

Unfortunately, the fancy dynamic design and lazy coding of the site, means it's a nightmare for blind people who use screen readers. Whilst the wide reams of text make it a pain for some users of zoom magnification software.

A revelation came when a member of the Ouch! team logged onto the mobile version of the site on her phone.

The mobile version is designed to be much simpler and includes all the main features of Facebook in an easy, accessible format which works much better with technologies like screenreaders and magnifiers. This is because it is designed for small mobile phone screens and the less advanced web browsers they use.

You can try it by browsing to m.facebook.com on your phone. It works a treat with mobile speech and magnification packages like Talks, Zooms and MobileSpeak.

But even better for those of you without access to mobile technology! I also discovered you can access the same easy interface from your desktop. Here's how:

- First, you will need an alternative web browser such as .
- Then go to .
- You should then see the mobile version of the site and you can log-in as normal.

A few caveats, unfortunately, the mobile site doesn't work in Internet Explorer so you will need an alternative browser like or , if you can find a solution to make it work in Internet Explorer, we'd love to hear it - let us know in the Comments.

Also, the mobile version doesn't include all the fancy features like live chat and extra applications. If you use those, stick to the regular site.

Note that earlier versions of Jaws screenreader will not work with Firefox. You'll need Jaws 8 or above. But if you have it, don't worry, Firefox works in a very similar way to Internet Explorer so it's not a massive learning curve.

Enjoy!

Update: The mobile site has been updated to work in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. There's also a shiny new with more info.