Screen Reader Limitations

Question

I am a web developer and I want the websites I am developing to be more accessible to those who use screen readers. What are the limitations of shielding devices that I should know more about, and what can I do to avoid these restrictions.

This question was prompted by the fact that he read another question about unprinted matches . There, a commentator said that honey form fields (form fields hidden with CSS that only the bot fills) are bad ideas because screen readers will pick them up anyway.

Are screen readers really so primitive that they read text that doesn't even appear on the screen? Ideally, could you make a screen reader that waited for the page to finish loading, apply all the css, and even run the Javascript download functions before it finds out what was actually shown and then read it to the user? You could probably even identify the parts of the page that are the menu or the table of contents, and provide some simple way for these parts to be read exclusively or skipped. I would think that the developer community might find a better solution to this problem.

Answer 1

Are screen readers really so primitive that they read text that doesn't even appear on the screen?

What you should remember is that any HTML parser does not read the screen - it reads the markup of the source. The screen shows that the browser is trying to apply CSS to the source code. It does not matter.

Perhaps you could even identify the parts of the page that are the menu or the table of contents, and give some easy way to read these parts exclusively or to skip.

You could if there was a standard for such a thing.

I'm not very hot due to screen reading restrictions, however I read a lot about the fact that they are not perfect. The best thing I can recommend is to get your source in order - as you read it.

There is a set of CSS properties , you should also look at screen programs.

Answer 2

Recommended Audition: Hanselminutes

This is an interview with a blind programmer.

Answer 3

How many forms does * or bold have to indicate to the user of the sight that the field is required for the correct presentation? What does a screen reader do? Say "star"?

The following is an example of code that is useful in formulating verbally but not visually.

(note that in the example below, the word “required” is pronounced but not visible on the screen)

In the template:

<label for="Requestor" accesskey="9"><span class="required">&nbsp;Requestor&nbsp;*&nbsp;</span><span class="hidden">required.</span></label> 

In CSS:

 #hidden { position:absolute; left:0px; top:-500px; width:1px; height:1px; overflow:hidden; } 

or

 .hidden { position:absolute; left:0px; top:-500px; width:1px; height:1px; overflow:hidden; } 

Each X / HTML page may have a whole parallel view behind the "visible."

Answer 4

Take a look at ARIA , a standard for developing affordable web client rich applications.

Answer 5

@robertmyers

CSS contains a type of sound media that is specifically designed to control the “rendering” of things when screen readers do their job. So, for example, you would only set it as visible to the type of audio media.

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@Ross

I understand perfectly that the screen reader does not actually read the screen, but you would think that in order to work well, he would have to build a model of what a person sees with an eye, otherwise it would seem like it would do a really bad job by access to the user, which is actually on the page. Also, placing things in the order in which you read them doesn’t actually work, because the sighted person quickly scans the page and reads the section they want to read. Do you first place the content so that the user listens to them each time, or do you put them at the end so that they can get to the content first? Also, putting the content in order would mean some kind of complex CSS to find things where you wanted them to be for sighted users.

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It seems to me that most web pages contain a very similar design and that in many cases it should be possible to choose where the headers and side columns are repeated. When viewing many subsequent pages on the same site with the same formatting, it should be easy to figure out which sections are navigation and which are content. Having done this, the screen reader can completely skip the navigation sections and go directly to the content, as most famous users would do.

I understand that there are limitations, and that doing such things is not easy. However, I feel that as far as screen readers go, we just made a minimum and left it to that.

Answer 6

Here is a list of CAPTCHA alternatives compiled by Karl Groves: CAPTCHA Security

Answer 7

@Kibbee,

What you describe as “primitive” is actually a feature of screen readers that can be used and used to make sites more accessible. For example, if you have a tabbed interface implemented with an unordered list and list items, then a sighted user usually sees a highlighted tab highlighted with a background color that is different (or some other visual processing). Blind users do not see this. Thus, adding some additional text to a page and hiding its screen is a method used to communicate with a blind user which tab is active.

In accessibility linguistics, this information is called role, name, value, and state.

There are many other scenarios where this method can be used to add information useful for blind users.

More recently, WAI-ARIA was added to allow this status, role, name and value information, so now you can implement a limited number of widgets (like tabs) using HTML attributes. However, the more general off-screen method is still useful.