Introduction to Screen Readers

Last updated: July 18, 2014

This page contains useful resources for people who are new to screen readers.

From the beginning…

• "What is a Screen Reader?" by Nomensa
• "Testing with Screen Readers" by WebAIM
• "Designing for Screen Reader Compatibility" by WebAIM

Videos

• Victor Tsaran's video, "An Introduction to Screen Readers"
• Introduction to the Screen Reader (video)
• For more videos, see Assistive Technology: a video tour of accessibility

For some heavier reading…

• "Using JAWS to Evaluate Web Accessibility" by WebAIM
• "Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities", a report by the Nielsen Norman Group
• Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work With Screen Readers (PDF, December 2003), a paper by Theofanos and Redish. The observations and conclusion are very useful but some of the guidelines are now a little out of date.

JAWS

• How JAWS reads text by Steve Faulkner, The Paciello Group

Reference

• JAWS Keystrokes reference
• Jaws and Window-Eyes keystrokes for Flash and PDF

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