Screen readers and manual testing for web developers

As an avid screen reader user, I’ve been frequently approached by web developers, “To show them the basics”, so that they can do their own manual accessibility testing. This sort of works, to a point, but if you’re not using a screen reader all the time, you don’t really get to learn the tool and your testing might miss nuances that a screen reader user would pick up on instantly. As I always say, ask the expert to help you. Getting someone with lived experience to show you exactly what can be improved to make your site more accessible will be a time saver for you. 

Still want to try out a screen reader for yourself? Be my guest. 

If you’re a Mac user, here’s an article on how to use Voiceover for testing. The information might be dated. I don’t have a Mac to verify.

http://uncaughtreferenceerror.com/a-crash-course-to-screenreaders-for-sighted-developers/

Pressing Command+F5 will launch Voiceover and there’s a great interactive tutorial that you should run through before you test your site. 

Then for the PC there’s a few choices for your testing pleasure.

If you’re on the latest version of Windows 10, then I’d urge you to press CONTROL+WINDOWS+ENTER and check out Narrator. This now built-in screen reader has matured tremendously in the last year and is quickly becoming a robust competitor to other screen readers out in the market. Narrator also has an interactive tutorial which is a good starting point. 

Then let’s check out NVDA (Non-visual Desktop Access) found at: www.nvaccess.org

For the quick navigation keys, check out section 6.0 of the NVDA user’s guide found here: https://www.nvaccess.org/files/nvda/documentation/userGuide.html?

And finally, the other popular screen reader, JAWS (Job Access with Speech). You can download a 40-minute mode demo at:

www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/

If you’re not into rebooting your system every 40 minutes, there are various licensing discounts that you can explore on that page there as well. 

As for navigating the internet with JAWS, you can visit the “Surf’s Up” page and you can find all that you need to start learning how to quickly navigate web pages. 

So, to recap, if you’re a web developer wanting to manually test your page with a screen reader, it’s possible to do so, but these can be complex tools. You’ll most definitely get better results if you get someone with lived experience, who uses a screen reader every day to do the manual testing for you.