Screen readers for accessibility

August, 2021

Intro

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), atleast 2.2 billion people in the whole world have visual impairments. For these people there are softwares known as screen readers which help them surf the internet.

What are screen readers?

In simple terms, a screen reader is a software which helps people with visual impairments interact with computers. Screen readers consume the content on the computer screen and translate it into another form which the user can understand.

How does the user get the information from screen reader?

Methods using which the software conveys the data to the user

• Speech : Screen readers use text to speech conversion to convert the data on screen into speech, which can be heard by the user. This procedure requires a speaker or headphone to work.
• Braille : This procedure requires a braille display connected to the computer. The braille display contains a series of cells containing a pin, which can be raised or lowered. This helps a lot of visually impaired people to get the information by running their fingers over the cells. The braille characters on the braille display change according to the change in the information on the computer screen.

How people with impairments communicate with computers?

All screen readers have various keyboard shortcuts or commands specified for every task. For a beginner, it may be difficult to get on with this but once the user gets familiar with the shortcuts or gestures then the user can confidently interact with the computers and become a master.

Recommended screen readers

• JAWS and NVDA for Windows
• Gnopernicus and Speakup for Linux
• Voice Over for MacOS

Conclusion

Screen readers are one of the most best softwares which help visually impaired people to surf on the internet and interact with computers. Softwares should be universally accessible, so it is essential that developers make websites and software compatible with screen readers. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) also state that websites should be more optimized for modern technologies like screen readers. In this way, it will be accessible to a wide range of people, even people with visual or any other impairments.