A 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!

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:

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.

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!