Hey there!
My name is JAWS . I am the most used screen reader in the world. Millions of people have to hear my annoying voice to be able to browse the web.
Je peux parler français.
Y puedo hablar español también.
But most importantly, I am a very good singer. Buy it use it break it fix it trash it change it mail upgrade it.
This is the reading flow. If you press Option and move up and down with arrows I will read the content of any page for you. I am so nice.
When users want to interact with the page, they use the Tab button to move the focus to focusable elements like links and inputs. Check that out.
Croissants are so yummy .
And I am now using the regular reading flow again. As you can see, it starts reading where the focus flow left off. Very handy.
It is very important to have a label associated with your text inputs, like in the previous example. Otherwise, how am I supposed to tell people what the input is for?
Same goes for images. Use alternative text to describe them:
In many cases, you will need to indicate something to screen readers, without labels or alternative texts being available. Icons using background-image in CSS instead of img tags for instance. Very often, you will want to use offscreen text instead. I will not read text hidden with:
In Yelp's codebase, the ".offscreen" class does this. Example:
I am offscreen. I don't take any space in the document flow, but JAWS can still read me
Users also navigate by jumping from heading to heading using the 1 key to navigate to h1, 2 key to navigate to h2, and so on.
Accessibility is not just about taking care of visually impaired people. People with motor disability might only be able to use simple keyboard actions for instance. And even without any handicap, what if you don't have a mouse to navigate on a page? You would be very happy to still be able to use a site normally with your keyboard only.