Domain7

Web Accessibility: Screen Readers

The idea of someone with disabilities using the web isn’t widespread. Yet people with all types of different disabilities view web pages. Many disabled visitors are able to view websites because of screen readers. Screen readers do exactly what you would expect: they read off a website to a listening person.

When developing a website and thinking of one’s audience, including those with various disabilities, the questions that spring to mind may be: How will they see my site? How does my site stack up against others? Do I have too many images? (Probably). Are my photos titled? (Not unless someone took the time to do that).

In my mind, speaking from the camp of people putting together a website, from designers to coders to authors, we are responsible for making it as accessible to everyone as possible. And that happens to include people who use screen readers.

So how do we do that while holding on to the aesthetic quality of a well designed site? I think that the more we move towards web standards compliant browsers, the more we can do with CSS - and the less we have to use images. The more we can use font tools like FontSquirrel and Typekit - the less we have to use images. And it’s all about getting away from information trapped in images. Because sifting out valuable information from what is just an image name, must be tiring and frustrating.

Once I discovered how hard it can be for people to use the web, I started using an evaluator tool to check out all my favorite sites - some were better than others but the consensus was that the whole webby world needs to get in gear and start building sites that anyone can use.

For more information on the WC3 Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility Test sites for accessibility: http://wave.webaim.org/

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