WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Question about Screen Readers

for

From: Joel Sanda
Date: Aug 14, 2001 2:32PM

Michael;
Great question! I'm sighted and have hearing and have used JAWS quite a bit
to test the accessibility of our products ... so maybe I can shed some light
on this.
Properly coded web pages will have their content, and some mark-up necessary
for meaning, read aloud by JAWS.
Certain elements, like anchor tags, images, list items, and so on will have
a preface read before them. So the following code:
<a href="http://www.home.com"><img src="home.gif" alt=""></a>
Will be read aloud as "image, anchor tag: home.com". I may have the exact
wording off a little, but that's the crux of it. On the other hand, coding
the same feature this way:
<a href="http://www.home.com" title="Go to Home.com's Home Page"><img
src="home.gif" alt="Picture of a House"></a> can be read as:
"link, Go to Home dot com's Home Page". Image: Picture of a House".
As for Lynx - you're on the right track. I often use Lynx to test sites with
style sheets turned off and to "see" what the blind will "hear", since the
alt attribute is displayed in Lynx.
Let me ask you this, in turn: how often do you encounter multi-media
presentations that have text transcripts or closed captioning?
As for training, have you hit the resources at: www.w3.org/wai? That's free
and there are some really good (the best, IMHO) learning resources there.
Joel
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Goddard [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 2:01 PM
To: WebAIM forum
Subject: Question about Screen Readers.

I am curious as to exactly what do the screen readers "read and speak". I
am deaf so I cannot "first-hand" experiment with something like this.
I have downloaded the Lynx browser to see what might a screen reader "read
and say" is this a reliable thing? Do the screen readers just speak the
text or do the screen readers actually speak the HTML coding as well?
I am trying to migrate more into the accessibility field for web design and
development since I believe it is going to explode in the near future.
Currently, I have over 5 years experience working in the field of web
development (strictly HTML coding) have learned many more skills including,
graphics, PHP, MySQL programming.
Anyone know of some online training for this? I know that WebAIM has
courses but I cannot afford something like that. I am hoping there might be
free courses anywhere?
Thank you,
Michael