If you would like to follow along using a Screen Reader I invite you to close your eyes and listen after installing one. When the reader stops hit tab again to listen to the next part of the story. Most screen readers are installed by your operating system and you’ll need a tutorial to use them if you aren’t familiar with how they work. If you’re using Chrome you can download an extension here:
Screen Reader Extension for Google Chrome
It can be a bit difficult to learn to use however, and NVDA is a much better choice. One more note, there might be a distinct lack of commas in this writeup; some screen readers pause when they hit commas and although I do love punctuation I will refrain from using it in some places here.
What would you do if you needed to use your computer just as you do every day but you couldn’t use a monitor?
When I was a kid I accidentally saved my CRT monitor’s resolution to an incompatible format. My PC was stuck trying to render a screen resolution my CRT didn’t support and that meant even though my PC was on I couldn’t see anything but a black screen. I knew the windows key on the keyboard would open my start menu and I knew how many keystrokes up over and down it would take to get to the control panel. It took a little trial and error using my headphones for windows error sound feedback but I got it back online eventually. I thought to myself then that I never wanted to make that mistake again but I also felt really cool for blind-navigating to my graphics settings to correct them. Since then I’ve had a fascination with accessibility and applying it wherever I can.
NVDA is a tool for reading text you’ve navigated to or selected in your Windows PC. I had no idea when I installed it a few years ago it would turn my desktop into a quacking frenetic cacophony of sound! After installing NVDA on my home machine out of curiosity my PC began yelling at me in Microsoft Sam’s voice as my mouse hovered over a text element it could read and whenever I tabbed through menus, or if I used autocomplete inputs in forms, or, or, or…
Everywhere I went Microsoft Sam was there to read it out to me. It was magical and a little overwhelming. It was a voice that never stopped, one that kept calling out a highlight reel of my every action like some kind of auctioneer whose sales were as quick as my clicking finger. I couldn’t see how this could be helpful as I blinked through web site after web site at the speed of sight, usually cutting Sam off before he finished the first word most of the time.
Then I closed my eyes.
Immediately I realized I would need to slow down. You can’t hear things nearly as quickly as you might instead see them when a robot friend is reading them at a fixed rate. Prompts sound as pedantic and dry as an automated telephone directory, and I’ll admit I sometimes need to hit the ‘Repeat this menu’ key when I call my bank.
Boldly, I tried to use Google to find a recipe with my screen turned off. “Aha” I said to myself “one of my favorite recipe sites! That will make things much easier. And one of my favorite chiffon recipes no less!”
This should be cake.
I thought it would be easy. Loading the browser from the OS was so simple. Tabbing into the search bar was a breeze. Parsing the resulting list was a smooth operation despite the pesky ads at the top of the list. I remembered setting those graphics settings when I was a kid and how much easier it would have been if good old Sam had been calling out the steps to me.
Instead, I was greeted with one of the worst offenders of accessibility violations I have ever cared to know. Video ads played automatically and unmuted without controls for turning them off. The tab navigation was full of ad links. Genuine content was displayed in ways that made the tool repeat information multiple times. HTML structure ran wild, with H4’s swallowing H3’s inside of the CMS content like some farce of nature.
I was surprised and indignant. I couldn’t believe how easily my eyes had glossed over the poorly made page design in the past. I wondered if the whole internet was this bad for screen readers and I started using NVDA more often. I asked myself if I could eventually learn to use a screen reader quickly and as efficiently as I could with my eyes. To this day that answer is still no.
This revelation hasn’t made me a perfect coder magically; I’m still learning as many are. When I want to know more I check out W3C’s accessibility initiative.
W3C Accessibility Initiative Site
There are great guidelines for developers here and there are a mountain of tools at our disposal. With very little extra effort we can make the internet a place everyone can use easily. I’m excited to start implementing some accessible WordPress templates on this site soon, just as soon as I learn more about them!
Aaron McCoy 