During a recent event hosted by the London Web Meetup group a blind individual gave a demo of using the web. Artur Ortega who is a keen technologist is also blind and has wealth of experience in using commercial screen readers in order to use the Internet.
Artur began by demonstrating JAWS that is a screen reader used by the blind on the Windows platform for a range of operations including surfing the web. Another alternative to JAWS, which Artur has used, is the less commonly used NVDA.
On loading a webpage the screen reader spoke out all of its elements in a linear view. This showed how specific the reader is in stating every part of a page and how structural layout is crucial in allowing a blind person to easily interpret it’s subject, content and navigational elements.
Headings Tool
Typically blind people don’t use the mouse/touch pad for screen reader use but use solely the keyboard. Atur demonstrated frequently throughout that he just as non- blind individuals like to skim a page’s content; perhaps only absorbing titles and subtitles. Screen readers have the functionality to do this in the form of keyboard shortcuts that can jump over content such as paragraphs to speed up the process of interpreting and finding information on the web for the blind.
Artur was keen to show off some of the features used in Yahoo’s homepage, which has specifically been designed with functionality for screen readers. In combination with JAWS he demonstrated the headings tool that tells the user of all the page’s visible headings. It provides the functionality to select and go to any of the listed headings. This is particularly useful when reading the results from a search engine request.
Language Options
Based on the language attribute of a page the JAWS reader is able to alter the pronunciation that the computer voice uses. This is limited to a selection of the most common spoken languages globally including English, Spanish and French. Artur also demonstrated a manual option for changing the screen reader’s language output.
JAWS as a product
To the audience’s amazement in the presentation Artur revealed that the price tag attached to JAWS is around £1000 for a fully licensed version. This does not include update fees, which occur yearly. When asked about subsidies and discounts Artur did mention of some minor reductions in cost to the blind but nothing significant.
An alternative open source and free alternative, which Artur also uses, is NVDA. It’s not clear whether or not this product matches to the same standard of functionality which JAWS has. Judged by the statistics of those using it; it would seem not to.
JavaScript & Flash
Artur also demonstrated accessibility to page elements that are JavaScript based. The Yahoo homepage has quite a number of elements that load using JavaScript. The JAWS screen reader was still able to read content within the loaded element which was set out in a clear, structured form.
The audience asked some questions about the use of Flash content by the blind and whether it was possible to interpret it with a screen reader. Artur gave a mixed response on the matter stating that he has successfully used Flash with readers such as JAWS and NVDA. This does all depend on properly layered source files when developing in Flash which have meaningful names along with buttons that follow good naming conventions.
London Web Meetup Video:
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