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Re: When Should You Show Web Content Only To Screen Readers

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From: Jim Homme
Date: Oct 11, 2019 1:58PM

Hi,
I think that you should assume that you are going to show content to only screen readers as a last resort. Mostly someone with another disability will benefit from seeing the same content. I might even go so far as to say that even something like a chart would work better in tabular form for everyone, people without disabilities included, especially when you start thinking of wider uses for your content, such as SEO. As for your concern about how people who are blind or who have low vision seeing certain content is concerned, that would be the time to reach out before you design the content and talk to someone with blindness or low vision about the design before you do the page, so that you can avoid making the mistake of assuming that they cannot access something, and possibly saving yourself a lot of unneeded effort.

Thanks.

Jim




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Jim Homme
Digital Accessibility
Bender Consulting Services
412-787-8567
https://www.benderconsult.com/our%20services/hightest-accessible-technology-solutions

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Abby Kingman
Sent: Thursday, October 3, 2019 10:25 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] When Should You Show Web Content Only To Screen Readers

I am interested in this as well. Some designers like to have a very sparse page layout, where essentially the structure of the page is implied visually. A sighted user will know they are scanning from one section to another on the page because the nature of the content changes. But I have concerns about whether this is difficult for non-sighted users.

For example, how do AT users know that they are moving to a section of the page that contains a group of filters that can be used to restrict the information in the content listing below? After the h1 there is a label for a dropdown list, then another and another - but why? have considered adding hidden headers for the filter area and listing area, but I don't know for sure that it is helpful. Maybe wrapping those areas with tags and creating a landmark would be cleaner, but I think many users don't rely heavily on landmarks. And maybe it is all more obvious than I think, so neither of those are needed.

I am looking forward to having some AT user testing done on these pages soon. Of course that will give me information on what that individual user prefers, but it's better than no insight at all.

Abby

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Abby Kingman, CPACC

Last Call Media