Lo que pasa cuando se usa la Web con un lector de pantalla durante un día

Muy interesante lo que se cuenta en I Used The Web For A Day Using A Screen Reader:

This was an interesting and challenging experience, and the hardest article of the series to write so far.

I was taken aback by little things that are obvious when you stop and think about them. For instance, when using a screen reader, it’s almost impossible to listen to music at the same time as browsing the web! Keeping the context of the page can also be difficult, especially if you get interrupted by a phone call or something; by the time you get back to the screen reader you’ve kind of lost your place.

My biggest takeaway is that there’s a big cultural shock in going to an audio-only experience. It’s a totally different way to navigate the web, and because there is such a contrast, it is difficult to even know what constitutes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ screen reader experience. It can be quite overwhelming, and it’s no wonder a lot of developers avoid testing on them.

But we shouldn’t avoid doing it just because it’s hard. As Charlie Owen said in her talk, Dear Developer, the Web Isn’t About You: This. Is. Your. Job. Whilst it’s fun to build beautiful, responsive web applications with all the latest cutting-edge technologies, we can’t just pick and choose what we want to do and neglect other areas. We are the ones at the coal face. We are the only people in the organization capable of providing a good experience for these users. What we choose to prioritize working on today might mean the difference between a person being able to use our site, and them not being able to.

Let us do our jobs responsibly, and let’s make life a little easier for ourselves, with my last tip of the article:

Tip #13: Test on a screen reader, little and often.

I’ve tested on screen readers before, yet I was very ropey trying to remember my way around, which made the day more difficult than it needed to be. I’d have been much more comfortable using a screen reader for the day if I had been regularly using one beforehand, even for just a few minutes per week.

Test a little, test often, and ideally, test on more than one screen reader. Every screen reader is different and will read content out in different ways. Not every screen reader will read “23/10/18” as a date; some will read out “two three slash one zero slash one eight.” Get to know the difference between application bugs and screen reader quirks, by exposing yourself to both.