Your daily frequent11y newsletter, brought to you by @ChrisBAshton:
What Is It Like to Use a Screen Reader?
- Anthony Vasquez shares some things you may not know about how some people use screen readers. The article is a follow-up to a Screen Readers in the Wild seminar. Some video demonstrations from the seminar are linked below:
- “Often, developers go too far treating images as decorative”, (perhaps because it’s easier to specify an empty
alt=""attribute than to come up with good alternative text? ~Chris), leading Anthony to feel he’s missing out on something, and to try to derive context from the surrounding content. Anthony praises The Atlantic for getting alt text right, with a good mix of short and long descriptions. - Anthony mostly navigates pages using arrow keys, which can “reveal important information” that is otherwise missed by tabbing. However, computer science student Su Park – who also demonstrated in the webinar – navigates mostly with tabbing and shortcut keys. Anthony says it is important to test both interaction styles.
- The article finishes with a little detail on what refreshable Braille displays are.
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