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Re: How does a Screen Reader work?

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From: tedd
Date: Mar 5, 2007 8:10AM

Hi Travis:

It appears that top posting is preferable here, so I'll continue the practice.

You said:

>* The page refreshes twice when the "Speak Captcha" button is pressed. When
>a page refreshes the screen reader will read the new page. Thus presently
>the audio and the screen reader both are speaking at the same time; which is
>a rather difficult situation. The user can silence the screen reader, but
>needs to be quick about it.

I understand -- I'll work on that. This is the type of feedback I need.

You said:

>* Again, the page is refreshed when the "Speak Captcha" button is pressed.
>While the audio is playing, the edit field is not present for the user to
>type. This causes the user to have to remember the sequence of keystrokes
>until after the page refreshes, and the edit field is navigated to and
>typing can begin.

The spoken word in the previous link is delivered by use of html
background sound via <BGSOUND> or <EMBED> tags. Unfortunately, those
tags cannot be written after the document loads. Even if I were to
use ajax, browsers require a refresh for those tags.

However, what I can do is to use FLASH to deliver the sound without
refreshing. It works for sighted users who can find the icon, but I
don't know how a blind user could "click the icon" as provided here:

http://sperling.com/examples/captcha1/

I'm so close to getting this to work, but can't seem to connect. All
I need to find is a way for a blind user to activate the Flash icon
-- any suggestions?

Also, this second example uses different type sound files, so that
might be a problem, but I don't know.

you said:

> The longer the captcha the more problemmatic this will be.

I agree that the longer the captcha the more problematic this will
be. However, studies have shown that three character retention for
sighted users is not a problem.

http://symboldomains.com/sperling.html

I am assuming, and I may be wrong, that remembering three characters
sounds for blind users won't be a problem either.

As for the those who may want to employ my technique, it will be hard
coded to just three characters. The reason for its use is to deter
spam bots and such. I think that one in a thousand chance should be
sufficient protection for most blogs and other such places of concern.

As for other disabilities being locked out -- I'll work on that when
I complete this task.

As for VoiceOver, I'm aware of it, but have not worked with it. You
see, I was developing a "blind" browser for the Mac that would parse
text from web pages and speak it to the user. However, when I heard
of VoiceOver being developed, I stopped development.

As I said, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

tedd

--- previous correspondences


At 10:12 PM -0600 3/3/07, Travis Roth wrote:
>Hi Tedd,
>
>Mac has a screen reader as well. It is called VoiceOver, and ships as part
>of OS 10.4 and later. I understand that it is not as far along developed as
>its Windows counterparts at this time.
>
>Observation on your captcha demo:
>* It is similar to Google's, and the audio quality seems similar.
>* The page refreshes twice when the "Speak Captcha" button is pressed. When
>a page refreshes the screen reader will read the new page. Thus presently
>the audio and the screen reader both are speaking at the same time; which is
>a rather difficult situation. The user can silence the screen reader, but
>needs to be quick about it.
>* Again, the page is refreshed when the "Speak Captcha" button is pressed.
>While the audio is playing, the edit field is not present for the user to
>type. This causes the user to have to remember the sequence of keystrokes
>until after the page refreshes, and the edit field is navigated to and
>typing can begin. The longer the captcha the more problemmatic this will be.
>
>* Would be better if user could type as the characters are heard. To do
>this, do not refresh the page, use some JavaScrit / Ajax techniques here.
>* This technique of using sound will work for those who can hear and
>understand reasonably well. However, deaf-blind users, and certain other
>hard of hearing users will still be locked out.
>
>Travis Roth
>Production Manager
>TecAccess, LLC
>(804) 749-8646 (office)
>(402) 466-0907 (direct)
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>www.TecAccess.net
>Experts in Section 508 Compliance & Accessibility
>
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