Screen Reader

What is a screen reader used for?

Screen readers are super useful for users trying to navigate through a page who are unable to view due to a seeing impairment. A great way to test out if your page is accessible is to turn your screen’s brightness down to 0% (black screen) and try to tab through the page using the below techniques.

Setting up my screen reader on a Mac

  1. On your Mac, go to System Preference > click Accessibility > go to Spoken Content and then toggle speak selection on.
  2. Then click back to Accessibility > click VoiceOver and toggle it on.
  3. On your Mac, press the specified keyboard shortcut (the default key combination is Option-Esc).
  4. If text is selected when you press the keyboard shortcut, the selected text is spoken. Otherwise, available text items in the current window are spoken; for example, if Mail is the current window, an email message is read.
  5. If you set the option to automatically show the controller, it appears onscreen when your Mac starts speaking. Use the controller to change the speaking rate, move forward or backward one sentence in the text, pause and resume speaking, or stop speaking.


  6. Note: If no text items are available, a beep sound plays.
  7. To stop the speaking, press the keyboard shortcut again or exit the controller toolbar.

How can I navigate through a page with just my keyboard?

Here are some mac shortcuts that work across multiple browsers:

Turn the voice over on

[command + f5]

Tab by headers

[control + option + command + h]

Tab by links

[control + option + command + l]

Tab through the entire page, word-by-word

[control + option + command + d]

Tab forwards

[control + option + right arrow]

Tab backwards

[control + option + back arrow]

Click on a link

[control + option + space]

Jumping between tabs

[option + command + left/right arrow]

Pause

[control]