Webstandards, Accessibility and Usability at Penn State

This Page

1. Tools Needed
2. Demo
3. Accomodations Needed
4. Hidden Audience
5. Testing and Demo Tools
6. Lists of Jaws Commands
7. Screen Reader Vendors

These are people who may rely on a screen reader (or software which reads content aloud) to access Web sites. Visual cues such as images, layout of data tables or multi-columns layouts may be unavailable to them without adding additional information within an HTML document.

Tools Needed

Screen readers are used by users with severe visual impairment. They may be paired with either Internet Explorer and Firefox or text only browsers such as Lynx in order to facilitate screen reader operation.

The most common screen reader is probably JAWS (Windows only), but other screen readers such as Windows-Eyes (Windows), VoiceOver (Mac), Emacspeak (Linux) may also be used.

Top of Page

Demo

Top of Page

Accomodations Needed

The main accomodations needed by this audience are:

• ALT text to describe images on the Web, in Microsoft Word/PowerPoint, ANGEL, Flash, PDF and any other online document
• Web Forms should identify functions of fields to users
• Table headers should be properly labeled.
• Frames on a Web page should be labeled with meaningful titles
• a href="../../tech/scripts"Javascript, a href="../../tech/flash">Flash functions should be accessible from a keyboard.
• Software and online tools should be designed to read out menus and functions to screen reader user.

See Details by Tech to learn more about how to implement specific accommodations for each technology

Hidden Audience for Text Browsers

Some users may be using a text-only browser such as a PDA, cell phone Web viewer, or they may disable image downloading because of slow connections. Users outside the United States may only have access to the Internet via a text-only browser such as Lynx or a cell phone.

Top of Page

Testing and Demos Tools

Screen Reader Simulations

• WebAIM Screen Reader Simulations
• Demos of Screen Readers
• Yellow Pipe Lynx Viewer - Download Lynx or simulate view of Web page in Lynx

Screen Reader Simulation Plugin

• Illinois iCITA Firefox Accessibility Extension - Includes option to hide visuals, CSS.
• Fangs Screen Reader Emulator for Firefox - does not speak aloud, but displays page for any Web page in screen reader format (no text breaks, headers/tables announced)

Top of Page

Lists of Jaws Commands

JAWS is one of the most commonly used screen reader programs. It not only reads Web sites, but reads all text within the Windows system (application menus, document text, help screens, and so forth).

• WebAxe (Jaws 8.0)
• Web AIM Keyboard Shortcuts for JAWS
• California Community Colleges
• JAWS 4.5, University of North Texas
• Penn State (JAWS 4.02)

Screen Reader Vendors

• JAWS (Freedom Scientific)
• Windows-Eyes (Windows)
• VoiceOver (Apple)
• Emacs for Linux - Supports Aural stylesheets. Author is a visually disabled programmer.

Top of Page