Screen Readers

Owned by David Fourney (Unlicensed)
Jul 05, 2019
2 min read

Did You Know?

Screen readers can output content in speech and/or braille.

Text-to-speech screen readers provide audio output using a voice synthesizer. Depending on the technology used, this synthesized voice can sound very robotic or nearly natural. Screen reader users can switch between different voices to experience specific accents/dialects, female or male voices, or voices that sound like children or elderly persons.

Text-to-speech screen readers can support different languages. To best support screen reader pronunciations in the language of the web content, make certain that:

  • The <html> element includes a lang attribute with the correct two-character code for the main content language (e.g., for English, use lang=”en”).
  • The lang attribute is added to any element containing content that is not in the main content language. (Note: Do not do this for common English words from another language.)

A user can change the speech rate of a screen reader. While synthesizer quality can degrade at very high speeds, it is possible for users of text-to-speech screen readers to set the speech rate in excess of 500 words per minute. High speech rates allow experienced users to quickly scan and/or read information.

Users can also customise the verbosity of the screen reader; the amount of detail and feedback the screen reader will provide. This can include highly tutorial instructions on what command is available on an element and what keys to press, announcing the start/end of an element (e.g., table, list), information on states (e.g., checkboxes are checked), and key echo (i.e., repeating what key was just typed).

Generally speaking, there is no standardized user experience that can be expected across all users and all screen readers.

The City relies on the following screen readers:

  • JAWS (Windows)
  • NVDA (Windows)
  • VoiceOver (macOS)
  • TalkBack (Android)
  • VoiceOver (iOS)

Note: Most of these tools are available at no cost. However, JAWS can be expensive. Testing with NVDA and/or VoiceOver may provide a “good enough” idea of the overall screen reader experience of the design and identify many critical issues. The ACPF team will test with all three major screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver macOS).

Using Screen Readers

Here are some resources on how to use screen readers:

In this section: