> 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.
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.