>the two important aspects are knowing where you currently are
>(location), and knowing how to get from where you are to where you want
>to be (navigation). Pop-up windows take the focus of the browser from
>the window where you think you are, and suddenly drop you into an
>unexpected place. The result is disorientation, and often a failure to
>provide navigation back to where you want to be.

That's the theory alright, but the practice, at least as far as my
experience goes is somewhat different.  After a little experience most
users will be able to recognize a pop-up event and deal with it with a
keystroke or two.  They will quickly learn that those annoying advertising
pop-ups can be easily and quickly dismissed with a single alt-f4 to kill
the window.

These pop-ups almost always make themselves known (or the screen reader
handles it) by saying something like, "new browser window", or by the
totally annoying Windows discordant boing (yes, I realize it is annoying
for a reason), but even in the absence of these clues, there is the most
noticeable clue of all -- thecognitive dissonance of the complete change of
context.  When a pop-up puts some new information under your reading cursor
it is immediately (or nearly so) apparent, and where your reading cursor
actually is is of no consequence (location in official guideline parlence).
 "Navigation", or getting back to what you were doing, as I said previously
is simply a matter of dismissing the pop-up either by giving what
information it needs if it is a system warning message, or closing down the
window with an alt-f4.  I can't honestly say that it disorients me.

The real problem with pop-ups is that at the very least they are damned
annoying (although there is a difference between system warnings and
advertising), and at the worst, intrusive, spyware, or can open a security
hole big enough to drive a virus through.

There is a new breed of these that disguise themselves as legitimate
Windows Messenger Service pop-ups, and the only way to ensure that they
don't get you is to disable Windows Messenger Service (which may annoy your
system admin people if you're in a corporate network environment), but you
can't do this in Win 98 or ME -- only in NT, 2000, and XP.  The other way
is to see if they make sense in your environment and notify your sys admin
people if something seems suspicious.

All in all, I don't really think (as a totally blind user myself) that
pop-ups are a very pressing issue except with regard to the security and
privacy problems I mentioned, which are only very remotely related to
accessibility issues, if at all.

For those wanting to stop all the pop-ups, pop-unders and such, I would
suggest taking a look at:

http://www.panicware.com

They even have a fairly decent, freely downloadable version of their popup
stopper program that works just great but doesn't have as many bells and
whistles as their for-sale versions.

-- Jim

------------

Jim Rebman

Center for Life-Long Learning and Design
Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado, Boulder

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent.  It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the
opposite direction."

 - E. F. Schumacher