Making sure online content is accessible is ultimately about creating a quality user experience. It’s about considering how different people may access, perceive, understand, and engage with your website, documents, social media content, online systems, etc., and finding the best ways to make it as easy as possible for them.
One of the assistive technologies that relies on content accessibility is a screen reader. A screen reader is a tool that reads digital content out loud. People who are blind or have low vision use it to navigate websites, documents, and apps.
Instead of seeing your layout visually, they experience your content as a linear, spoken experience so it must be designed to work with the screen reader. This means:
- Headings become navigation points
- Links need to make sense out of context
- Images need alt text to ensure they provide the same value as they do to non-screen reader users
- Structure matters more than appearance
Why you should test with a screen reader
One of the best ways to see whether your content makes sense to a screen reader user is to test it with a screen reader. You don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need to do a full audit. Just a few minutes of basic testing can completely change how you think about accessibility.
Automated checkers can catch technical issues, but they won’t give you an idea of what it’s actually like to experience it. A quick screen reader test helps you:
- Catch confusing content such as bad link text or vague headings
- Understand if the content makes sense in the order it is read
- Identify missing or unhelpful alt text
NVDA Screen Reader
NVDA (Nonvisual Desktop Access) is one of the most popular screen readers for PCs. NVDA will not work on a Mac, but Apple product users can use its built-in VoiceOver screen reader.
Check out Luminary Content’s List of Accessibility Tools page to find new resources that have recently been added to help you get started with using NVDA.
- Getting Started with NVDA Screen Reader for Windows (approximately 9 minute video)
- How to Navigate a Webpage with NVDA Shortcuts for Beginners (approximately 7 minute video)
- Testing a PDF’s Accessibility with NVDA Basics (approximately 4 minute video)
What to look for when testing with a screen reader
Keep in mind that when you start testing with a screen reader, you aren’t trying to catch everything. Just pay attention to the following:
- Does the order of the content make sense when read aloud?
- Can you tell how the page is organized based on the heading structure?
- Do headings make sense based on the content that follows them?
- Do links make sense on their own if you don’t read the content around them?
- Do you understand what the images convey based on their alt text?
You don’t need to be an expert to start making accessible content. But you do need to start experiencing your content differently—and a screen reader is one of the simplest ways to do that.
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