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Axess Lab
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Digital accessibility consultants, WCAG audits & training | Axess Lab
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What is a screen reader?
Nov 15, 2019Tap to summarizeA screen reader is an assistive technology, primarily used by people with vision impairments. It converts text, buttons, images and other screen elements into speech or braille. Let’s go through what a screen reader is, how it works and see blind people in action! Screen reader basics I use a screen reader on my mobile device every day, so it’s a technology I’m very familiar with. But I know it’s new and strange to most people. So let’s go through the basics! Screen readers are mainly used by people with no or limited vision to get information in a way accessible to them: braille, speech or both. The best way to understand is to watch it in action. So here’s Marc Sutton showing a desktop screen reader. At the end of this article, we’ve added a few more videos with screen reader users, showcasing different screen readers on different devices. So scroll down and check them out if you’d like! Fasten your seatbelt – they are quick! The first thing most people comment on when meeting a screen reader user is the speed at which the synthetic voice speaks. The Finnish developer Tuukka Ojala has his set at 450 words per minute. Here’s a 5 second audio clip of what that sounds like: https://axesslab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/450-wpm-online-audio-converter.com_.mp3 Pretty awesome huh! For reference, most sighted people read at about 150 words per minute, so he’s able to read at 3 times that speed. You should check out Tuukkas own article on this topic, where you’ll also find a longer audio clip of the screen reader speaking at lightning speed: Software development at 450 words per minute How are screen readers used? One thing that most people I meet haven’t thought about is that many screen reader users, like myself, have some remaining vision. So we often use a screen reader in combination with sight. For instance, I’ll sometimes rely on my sight for general navigation using a screen magnifier. Then I’ll turn on the screen reader when reading longer texts. On smaller devices I’ll rely more on the screen reader and on larger devices more on screen magnification. A great resource to understand screen reader users better is the Screen Reader User Survey by WebAIM, which over a thousand people respond to about once every other year. The survey goes through things like: Screen readers most commonly used Web browsers Operating systems Reasons for inaccessibility And much more! So head on over to that site and learn all you need to know. But below is a summary of how desktop and mobile screen readers are used. Desktop screen readers On a desktop, users will usually navigate using their keyboard. Either stepping from object to object or by jumping between different types of components, like headings, forms, links or landmarks. Want to learn from a screen reader user? We offer trainings to master screen reader basics. Thanks to the awesome Screen Reader User Survey mentioned above, we know that most desktop screen reader users navigate between headings when they arrive at a new page. For instance by pressing the h-key in JAWS – one of the most used desktop screen readers. There are many keyboard shortcuts for screen readers that lets you do everything from searching content to identifying the font of the text you currently are reading. Here is a list of around 100 shortcuts for the JAWS screen reader. Mobile screen readers Even though it’s possible, most screen reader users don’t connect a keyboard to their mobile devices. Instead, we navigate by moving our finger on the screen in one of two ways: Touch navigation: dragging our finger across the screen, and getting what’s under our finger read to us. Swipe navigation: Swiping left and right to move to the next or previous item. Kind of like using the tab-key on a computer keyboard. It’s very common for people to switch between these modes of navigation. I myself prefer using the touch method most of the time, but then I’ll switch to swipe navigation if I suspect I’m missing something on the screen. Swiping is a more thorough way of navigating, since it sets the focus on every item, even on the smallest of click targets. But it usually takes a bit more time than the touch method. A super handy feature for people who know braille is the braille keyboard in iOS devices. Here’s a video showing how that can be used. Try it yourself A great way to learn about screen readers is to try one yourself! It takes a bit of training though. Rob Dodson has made a few great 7-12 minute tutorials for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android! Let’s start with the iPhone! Moving on to Talkback for Android. VoiceOver on MacBooks. Finally NVDA for Windows!...
Transcribe →I used switch control for a day
Nov 1, 2019Tap to summarizeStephen Hawking used something called a switch to communicate, author books and surf the web. Just like Stephen, millions of people around the world with motor impairments use switches to access technology. Sadly, the awareness and knowledge about this assistive technology is generally low. So it’s time to switch the spotlight on switch users! Short note before we start: This article was first written for the great initiative 24 Accessibility – an accessibility article each day in December before Christmas. Switches can look very different, but in the image above I’m holding a classic one – basically, a big button that you press to navigate your computer, smartphone or tablet. I’m an accessibility nerd. I organize accessibility meetups, run a company focused on accessibility (Axess Lab), can recite the accessibility guidelines in my sleep and own 6 different accessibility T-shirts. But even though I live and breathe accessibility, I realize I have a very limited knowledge about switches. I know way more about screen readers than I do about switches. When you think about it, that’s really strange. Looking at pure numbers, there are far more people around the world who have motor impairments like Cerebral Palsy, ALS and Parkinson’s disease than who are blind. So why do we hear and read so little about switch accessibility? I don’t know! But whatever the reason, I feel it’s time to switch it up! Time to learn more about this assistive technology and what we as developers and designers can do to make our technology switch accessible. So I used a switch control for a day and I’d like to share the insights it gave me with you! My setup I used a classic type of switch, basically a big colored button. It’s the one I’m looking suspiciously at in the first image of this article. This type of switch can be placed in the users’ hands, by their head, elbows, feet or wherever they feel most comfortable with it. I held my switch in my hands. I should mention that there are many other types of switches: Sip-and-puff switches. They are “clicked” by sipping and puffing into a straw-like-component. Sensory switches. Stephen Hawking had a sensor attached to his cheek that he activated by a small movement with his cheek up or down. Camera switches. On iOS products, you can activate a switch by tilting your head to the side. There are many other variations of switches, but they all work similarly to the original button-switch, so I used a button. It should also be mentioned that I used a single switch. You can set up multiple switches for different actions – for instance, you could assign one to take you to the home screen, one to move the cursor forward (like pressing the tab-key on a keyboard) and one to click. However, it is possible to use a single switch to fully interact with technology. Which I think is pretty cool so I wanted to try that! Also, I know of people who use a single-switch-setup, for instance, the YouTuber Christopher Hills, whose channel I strongly recommend you check out. I used the built-in setting Switch Control in iOS products — on an iPhone 7, MacBook and Apple TV. It is, of course, possible to use switches on a PC or Android device, but I felt it would be enough of a challenge for me to try it out on one operating system this time. Insights Let me share the insights I got from my day of switch usage with you. Technology is awesome Even though I experienced a few obstacles along the way which I’ll go through below, the main thing that stuck with me is how awesome this technology is. All you need is control of a tiny part of your body so you can activate a switch, and suddenly the whole world opens up through technology. You can surf online, pay bills, order pizza, communicate with friends and unlock doors, all through a single switch. Imagine the difference in independence and quality of life this means for people with severe motor impairments living today compared to — say — 40 years ago. Even though the technology is awesome, there are still things that could improve a lot to give a more equal access and experience of technology out there. Typing is slow Typing with switch control is much, much slower than I’m used to. Here’s a video where I type “Hello World.” If you don’t want to watch the video I describe what happens in it in the text below the video player. https://axesslab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/hello-world-typing.mp4 Video description: A focus indicator jumps across the keyboard and you need to wait until it’s at the letter you want to type. It takes me over a minute to write “Hello World.” After having practiced a fair bit with typing, I measured how quickly I could type a happy birthday text to my mom. As a comparison, I first typed it with my fingers like I normally do, then a second time with switch control activated. The message was 18 words long. Here’s the result: Without switch control: 43 seconds With switch control: 8 mins 52 seconds (or 532 seconds) So it took me over 12 times as long to type with switch control activated, even though I made very few mistakes and used word suggestions as often as possible. Calculating my typing speed, I was able to type just over 2 words per minute. 2.2 to be exact. As a reference, this article is around 2700 words long, so at 2.2 words per minute, it would take me 20 hours 27 minutes to write it. I asked a colleague of mine to try out typing as well. She had not had the same amount of practice and was able to type at about half my speed, around 1 word per minute. These speeds are in line with sources on Stephen Hawking’s typing speed, which state Hawking could type around 1 word per minute before adding word predictions which doubled his speed. The slow typing speed came with a couple of insights for me: Word predictions when typing is super useful. But word prediction could improve a lot. For instance, I wrote “switch control” twice in one sentence, but my onscreen keyboard didn’t suggest it to me any quicker the second time around. Autocomplete in search fields is very helpful. Time limits – getting kicked out of a form if you don’t complete it in a set amount of time – is a severe accessibility barrier. Forms that prefill automatically save tons of time and energy. Dictation — speaking your message — would make typing much quicker. However, many people with motor impairments also have a speech impairment that makes dictation impossible. So I decided not to use dictation in my one-day-experiment. Scrolling is sometimes painfully slow I think everyone would agree that scrolling is something you do quite often, especially on smaller devices like smartphones. So it surprised me that it was painfully slow to scroll on an iPhone. Let me break down what switch users have to do to scroll: 2 quick clicks to bring up an interaction menu 1 click to select the row with scroll button 1 click to select the scroll button 1 click to select the row with scroll down button 1 click to select the scroll down button 1 click to go back to the main menu 1 click to close the interaction menu So in total 8 clicks to scroll down. Here’s a short video that shows the interaction described above when I scroll on Twitter. https://axesslab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/scroll-twitter.mp4 Video description: Scrolling one screen on Twitter with switch control. 20 seconds was needed to bring up, navigate and close the interaction menu. On Android, the scroll gesture seems to be much more effective, as illustrated in this YouTube clip: A11ycast with Rob Dodson – Switch Device (Youtube). Here it just takes two clicks to scroll: one when the whole page is selected, another one when the scroll down button is selected. What about on Mac? Well, it was much quicker to select the...
Transcribe →Trends That Exclude
Oct 18, 2017Tap to summarizeJumping on a new trend is risky business, both in fashion and web design! Here is why trends often hurt the user experience and exclude users with disabilities. I’ll also go through what you can do to avoid this from happening. Trend #1: Bright and light For a while now, it’s been considered modern to design things that are difficult to see. It’s a strange trend that’s causing problems for all sorts of users. Let me walk you through some troublesome bright and light trends out there. Thin, small, grey font Slim, tiny, grey letters are popping up in interfaces all over the web, forcing users to strain their eyes while reading. Companies like Squarespace are even winning awards for this kind of unsightly design: Running this interface through the disability simulator Funkify, this is what the interface above looks like with blurry vision: Not very pleasant, right? Nobody likes to strain their eyes when reading, but this trend is especially hurtful to some user groups: Users with small devices People who are outside in bright sunlight Elderly users People with low vision When asked what causes accessibility problems on the web (our full article: Accessibility According to Actual Users with Disabilities), quite a few people brought up this topic: Nearly blind in my left eye. Tiny, thin font with low contrast to the background — Andrew So (@AndrewDixonSo) 3 juni 2017 I know what you’re thinking: It’s Apple’s fault! Yes, Apple introduced a thin font in iOS a couple of years back and they used grey text color a lot in their designs. However, they made sure the grey had a sufficient contrast level (how to check color contrasts) and the thin font wasn’t measured in nanometers. The problem was that when other designers jumped on this trend, they made the grey color brighter and the letters thinner. Suddenly the text was only readable by designers with 52 inch retina displays and predator birds. That’s why it’s so nice to hear that Apple is ditching it’s thin, grey fonts. Here’s a comparison between the old and new phone interface: So Apple is moving away from the thin, grey trend. You should too. Bright color schemes Many users with disabilities struggle on the web because of contrast issues in trendy interfaces. Lack of contrast between font color and background color. Photo backgrounds that overpower the text on top of them. — Megan Lynch (@may_gun) 4 juni 2017 One common offender is white text on brightly colored backgrounds: The color contrasts between the text and backgrounds above are terrible and far below the <a hr...
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