Screen reader workshop 101

This is a simple workshop that will introduce the fundamentals of using screen readers as developers. To keep things simple and manageable, we are only using NVDA or VoiceOver on MacOS.

Setting expectations

This is an introductory workshop intended to be completed in an 90 minutes. Don't expect to leave this workshop as an expert screen reader user.

• You WILL leave with a screen reader installed and configured for optimal testing.
• You WILL leave with a basic understanding of how to use a screen reader, including different reading modes, shortcuts, and wayfinding.
• You WILL leave with a basic understanding of semantics.
• You WILL NOT leave with an understanding of every possible way that a screen reader can be used.
• You WILL NOT leave with an understanding of every possible way to code semantics.
• You WILL NOT leave with an an understanding of all of the expected keyboard and screen reader behaviors.
• You WILL NOT leave with enough knowledge to perform expert level quality assurance checks.

Want to learn more? Check out Deque University.

Activity 0

Pair up in groups of 2 to 3 people, following these general principles:

• Find someone that you don't know.
• Try to pair up with someone that is using a different operating system so that you can see how their screen reader is similar or different from yours.
• If you have used a screen reader before, try to find someone who hasn't so that you can help them.

Activity 1 - report out

Take 30 seconds to tell the entire group the following.

• Who you are.
• where you work.
• your expierence level with screen readers.
• What you hope to learn today (it's okay if its out of the scope of this workshop. I'll still try to answer your questions.

This workshop was created for the Nebraska Digital Accessibility Meetup

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.