Well,
Screen readers still operate primarily in a serial fashion, although with many changes since 8 years ago. The VoiceOver screen reader can read in either serial or Dom mode. Also, one can look for landmarks, windows spots, static text, characters, words, paragraphs, images and the like. Voiceover is probably the most complete built-in screen reader and exists on all products in the apple ecosystem.
In linux, there is ORCA, which is almost as versatile as the VoiceOver screen reader, although ORCA has some dependencies that need installing if it is ever to work to it’s full potential. It has the ability to navigate containers, tables and the like (just as VoiceOver can).
Jaws (or Job Access with Speech) is the windows closed source screen reader from BSI (formerly Jaws, or Hentor Joyce as the original company was known by). It is fairly powerful and can work in most apps and even does a reasonable job of parsing a website. NVDA is the open source version and is equally as powerful. Unfortunately, not all apps on any of the platforms are screen reader usable. On windows, unless accessibility code is included, many apps based on python and compiled as exe’s are not usable with any known screen reader (case in point is the open source radio programming software CHIRP. There are other “open source” software packages for windows that have this design flaw. The same can be said on the Apple ecosystem and yet there is accessibility code for many of the programming languages that could make this easy to work around, yet many devs either don’t know or simply refuse to include said code in their work. So, the app arena is still the biggest stumbling block for us blind users and trying to educate devs becomes it’s own full time unpaid employment, often with only little success.
Now, web pages are a unique case in point as they are the “public access to a company or individual” and as such, qualify as “public access” in terms of the US ADA or it’s European equivalent Thus, such sites have to be accessible. Unfortunately, there is a small, but growing, cadre of individuals and companies who are in the accessibility space who seek to make changes the hard way, by the hammer of litigation. One such is “AccessiBee” and their so called “web overlay” which is often barely functional at the best of times. They use the extortionate method of “either buy our product or we sue you under section 508” and then they charge $$$ (typically into the mid 4 figures) for yearly “subscriptions” for their service. It is predatory entities like this that make advocating for proper accessibility such a nightmare.
So, if one wants to design a website using standard html, one should consider accessibility right from the start of the design process instead of bolting it on as an afterthought.
-Eric
> On Aug 28, 2023, at 7:58 PM, Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
> I'm writing this to Eric Oyen and anybody else interested in this...
>
> How much does having <main></main> in the proper place help a blind
> person?
>
> Same question for <header></header> and <footer></footer>.
>
> Does using <nav></nav> instead of <div></div> with a special class help
> those using screen readers and/or Braille machines?
>
> Same question with <menu></menu>.
>
> Eric, the reason I'm asking these questions is because in a 10/23/2015
> PLUG email you mentioned that screen readers operate in a serial
> fashion, and although there are some keyboard tricks to be able to skim
> a page of information, its still serial. I'm hoping that in the 8 years
> since you wrote this, screen readers have improved to the point where
> they can read HTML code, parse into DOM, and be able to skip to <main>
> or <nav> or <menu>, etc. Has there been such and improvement?
>
> Also, do Braille machines, which *can* be scanned rather than addressed
> serially, still cost $6,000.00?
>
> The reason I'm asking all of this is I'm formulating an HTML course
> for technologists, and naturally there's a section on HTML techniques
> to help people with disabilities read the material. It seems to me that
> many of the new HTML5 elements' main benefits are for those with screen
> readers or Braille machines. Before I recommend use of these new tags,
> I'd like to verify that they're really helpful to blind people or
> people with other disabilities.
>
> If there's anyone reading this email who has either Red/Green color
> blindness, Monochrome color blindness, or some other kind of color
> blindness, please clue me in on the rules of the road beyond not using
> color solely to distinguish between types of text.
>
> Thanks everyone.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
> Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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