WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: accessibility of accessibility checking tools

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From: deborah.kaplan@suberic.net
Date: Dec 23, 2015 4:57PM


Olaf,

Some of these features do exist.

> What would be extremely useful are features that help a sighted user to understand what's going on while using AT (e.g. by highlighting on screen what is currently being presented by text to speech or the Braille display).

In NVDA, for example, the speech viewer is hugely useful for sighted users (especially as understanding screne reader inflections is a learned process, and the free voices aren't that great for newbies). Additionally, there are add-ons such as "focus highlight," which highlights the currently focused text; it's not in the core, but it is easy to find and install to anyone willing to make a modicum of effort. There are well documented shortcuts which will report what a particular key combination would do.

VoiceOver's rotor appears visually on the screen, so a sighted user can easily flip through the possible options and see what can be discovered.

It takes some effort, but then, there's a paradigm shift for sighted users, which will take practice no matter what.

Deborah