Thanks a lot for that blog post (and the update)! That was super insightful and interesting to me.
Setting up a screen reader and actually experiencing the way a blind person views the web has been on my list of things to do for the longest time, but ditched time and again in favor of the latest hotness in our industry.
Reading bits like “crime against humanity” in relation to improperly used form elements are a good reminder of the responsibility we have when it comes to the semantic output of our work, which makes me wonder:
How usable are interface-heavy reactive UIs to you? How - if at all - are screen readers picking up on changing parts of an interface?
Which brings me back to setting up a screen reader myself... Is there a guide you know of to set up a VM to experience the web like a blind person does, or is installing a screen reader in combination with a regularly set up browser fine for accessibility testing?
Cheers and... I wish you all the best for your dev-career! I am super impressed.
> How usable are interface-heavy reactive UIs to you? How - if at all - are screen readers picking up on changing parts of an interface?
In general, screen readers don't automatically announce changes in a web page or other UI. For web pages, if something should be automatically read when it's changed or added, it should be marked as an ARIA live region, using the aria-live attribute. Some native GUI toolkits have a similar feature, e.g. the LiveSetting property in Windows UI Automation.
I strongly discourage using a VM to test with a screen reader, because audio in a VM is often annoyingly laggy. Just do it on your main machine. On macOS, you can turn VoiceOver on and off with Command+F5. On Windows 10 version 1703 (Creators Update) or later, you can turn Narrator on or off with Control+Windows+Enter. Another popular screen reader for Windows is the open-source NVDA (https://www.nvaccess.org/). For Unix-based desktops, GNOME has the Orca screen reader; other desktop environments have nothing AFAIK. iOS has VoiceOver, Android has TalkBack, and Chrome OS has ChromeVox.
Disclosure: I work for Microsoft on the Narrator team.
Setting up a screen reader and actually experiencing the way a blind person views the web has been on my list of things to do for the longest time, but ditched time and again in favor of the latest hotness in our industry.
Reading bits like “crime against humanity” in relation to improperly used form elements are a good reminder of the responsibility we have when it comes to the semantic output of our work, which makes me wonder:
How usable are interface-heavy reactive UIs to you? How - if at all - are screen readers picking up on changing parts of an interface?
Which brings me back to setting up a screen reader myself... Is there a guide you know of to set up a VM to experience the web like a blind person does, or is installing a screen reader in combination with a regularly set up browser fine for accessibility testing?
Cheers and... I wish you all the best for your dev-career! I am super impressed.