| dotjay’s lab / notes / screen-readers / introduction

Introduction to Screen Readers

Last updated: March 28, 2008

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
• 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 (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 The observations and conclusion are very useful but some of the guidelines are now a little out of date.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 (HTML and accessible PDF)
• Jaws and Window-Eyes keystrokes for Flash and PDF

Back to the Notes index.

Back to the Lab index.