Screen reader

✎ Technique: Label in name

People with disabilities rely on interface controls that are used programmatically. These controls have a visual label, as well as a programmatic label, known as its Accessible Name. Users have a much better experience if the visible text labels of controls match their accessible names.

Speech input users can navigate by speaking the visible text labels of menus, links and buttons that appear on the screen. It’s confusing to speech input users when they say a visible text label they see, but the speech input does not work because the accessible name that is enabled as a speech input command does not match the visible label.

✎ Technique: Status messages

Assistive technology users should be able to detect when important changes occur on a web page, With the use of a status message, information can be provided to the user without changing focus or unnecessarily interrupting their work. The following are the kinds of status messages to provide:

  • success or results of an action
  • waiting state of an application
  • progress of a process
  • existence of errors

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✎ Technique: Differentiating controls

Placement of controls affects their ease of use. For example, for a search feature, the “submit” button should be positioned right after the input field. Appearance and positioning are particularly important when providing a control that supports “destructive” actions, such as a “delete” or “clear” button. In these cases, ensure that these controls are clearly differentiated .... Read more about ✎ Technique: Differentiating controls

✎ Technique: Building tables

The <table> element is for data that one might find in a spreadsheet, consisting of rows and columns of cells. Browsers provide this mechanism to display table structures and to convey table data to assistive technologies. It's important to ensure that the editing process allows identifying row and column headers so that screen reader users can access the meaning of each data cell by understanding what row and column it appears in.

In WYSIWYG editors such as the one provided in Open Scholar, it's possible to create HTML tables using the table tool.... Read more about ✎ Technique: Building tables

✎ Technique: Structuring content

Adding structure to web content makes it more readable and comprehensible to everyone and especially to people with a visual or cognitive impairment that makes reading on-screen content difficult.

The purpose of HTML is to give structure to otherwise seamless runs of text. HTML allows us to provide semantic meaning to text so that it's available to assistive technologies.... Read more about ✎ Technique: Structuring content

✎ Technique: Writing link text

Link text is the text you select for a link that describing what happens when a user activates it. So it needs to clearly and accurately convey the link's purpose. Commonly, link text is the name of the linked page or document. When a link leads to a document that's not a web page, such as a PDF or Word document, that should be clarified in the link text. Avoid overly terse, ambiguous link text, and avoid reusing the same link text within a page for links that lead to different destinations.

Good link...

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✎ Technique: Writing web page titles

The title of a web page is the page's accessible name, and it will be the first thing read aloud by a screen reader when it starts reading the page. It will also be used by search engines, and it labels the browser’s tab containing the page.

To be as helpful as possible, the title should briefly tell the user what the page is about and where they are within the site.... Read more about ✎ Technique: Writing web page titles

✎ Technique: Referring to page content by its position

Avoid referring to a button, menu, or other item in the page only by its position on the page; instead, use additional information that describes the content.

Referring to a specific item in the page content by only its visual position prevents people who use screen readers from being able to make sense of this visual description. Another downside to referring to items by their position is that their position might change when the page is viewed at different screen sizes, such as on...

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✎ Technique: Identifying lists of content

Lists are collections of related content. For example, a navigation bar is a list of links or a set of instructions may be an ordered (numbered) list. Clearly identifying a set of items as a list helps people understand that relationship. When you include a list in your page content, this relationship needs to be conveyed visually, and it also needs to be conveyed to people using screen readers.... Read more about ✎ Technique: Identifying lists of content

✎ Technique: Identifying headings

Headings are important orientation aids, and they help people quickly identify the content on your page. When headings are correctly identified, they also allow screen-reader users to quickly navigate from heading to heading using the screen reader's heading navigation functionality.

The best way to do this is to ensure that headings are identified in HTML. When using a web-content editor or a word-processing application, you can do this by making use of the heading options in the styles menu. ...

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✎ Technique: Describing graphs

Some people understand complex information best when it's presented visually, such as as a chart or diagram, while others find that reading the information suits them better. For people who use screen readers, a good text equivalent of the information that’s presented graphically is essential for their understanding.

For simple graphics, providing a succinct, informative text alternative is usually fine. But for complex graphics, it's not enough to provide a screen reader user with only short alternative...

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✎ Technique: Consistent layout

Consistency is one of the cornerstones of good usability. Although it is possible in advanced CMSs to create radically different page layouts according to content type, it's important that areas outside of the page’s content area remain consistent across the site for wayfinding purposes. This can be controlled through carefully designing and implementing page templates.... Read more about ✎ Technique: Consistent layout

✎ Technique: Text and images of text

Some people with reading difficulties or visual impairments need to customize the display of text to make it easier to read. When text is presented as an image of text, that limits their ability to change the appearance of that text. So wherever possible, use text along with CSS to apply styling (such as color, typeface, or size).

If you use an online content editor to write content, the styling will happen automatically. If you feel that you need text that deviates from the style, formatting options...

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