kestrell | Entries tagged with screen readers

David Kingsbury, one of the technology instructors at the Carroll Center for the Blind here in the Boston area, had a book launch yesterday for his new book, “The Windows Screen Reader Primer: All the Basics and More,” and it is being made available as a free download on the Carroll Center website.

The book contains over three hundred pages, and covers the three commonly used screen readers--Jaws, NVDA, and Microsoft Narrator--and a wide range of programs, including Word, web browsers, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, and some troubleshooting. I have worked with David as my instructor a number of times, including just a couple of weeks ago, and he would occasionally comment, "This is in my new book," so I know there is a vast amount of knowledge packed into those three hundred plus pages.

You can download the book by going to the following link and filling in a brief form:
http://carroll.org/the%20windows%20screen%20reader%20primer/

Current Location: aerye
Current Music: Broken Horses by Brandy Carlile

Kes: I just spent the past two weeks working with David Kingsbury, the author of this primer, and an extremely knowledgeable instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind. Anyone who knows me knows what a Hermione I am, so they will not be surprised to discover that I had prepared a long list of things I wanted to learn, then added a bunch more, and not only did he teach them all to me, but he kept saying, "This is in my new book."

So this is my combination book launch announcement and book review: this is an invaluable book for any screen reader user or instructor, and I would also recommend it to any usability/web developer who wants to have insight into how screen readers work with the web and various programs. Note: there are also chapters on working with PDF documents and Excel sheets, and how to handle some basic problems you may run into.
Last but not least, David is going to tell you how to download the ebook for free!

Announcement:

Join author David Kingsbury at a Window of Opportunity, the virtual book launch for his newest book, The Windows Screen Reader Primer: All the Basics and More.

For people with visual impairments, screen reader software is crucial for living in today’s world. Screen reader software converts text and other digital elements into speech or braille so users can get information in a way that is accessible to them.

The Windows Screen Reader Primer: All the Basics and More is a new book written to help JAWS, NVDA, and Windows Narrator users to work more effectively with the most important PC applications—like Microsoft Office, email clients, and web browsers.

During this event, come enjoy a reading of short excerpts, get priority access to download the free book and ask the author questions.
Time
Feb 17, 2022 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Book Launch Zoom Webinar Registration Form
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Y_KcmX0xR7SR84jG0i4InQ?bblinkid=257734724&bbemailid=37795482&bbejrid=-2050942267

Kes: I actually don't listen to my screen reader nearly this fast--my usual speed is only somewhat faster than an average speaker, I would call it highly caffeinated geek speed--and, while I have issues listening to older lesser quality TTS, II don't aspire to the higher quality, human-sounding TTS for most purposes: most of the time, the TTS is rendered kind of invisibl inside my head, equivalent to my internal reading voice.
https://tink.uk/notes-on-synthetic-speech/#main-content

And I have a full schedule of online courses!

I'm *very* excited about this one: I just found out that I was accepted for the NVDA twelve-week course being taught by the Tech Team at the New York Public Library.

Also, yesterday I bought a beautiful bodhran! I used the gift card Jesse the k gave me for my birthday, so it will feel twice as special, and I signed up for the bodhran for beginners course on Udemy (actually, it's called "Essential Bodhran," but I have an addiction to alliteration.)

For the past two weeks I've been working on a couple of other Udemy courses, "Hacking for Beginners" (which actually is a great intro to the computer network course) and "The Art of Doing: Learn the Linux Command Line." The latter includes transcripts and captions, so kudos to instructors who include accessibility in their courses. I wish there was a filter for courses that included those features.

I am in super-Hermione mode now, and ready to kick academic butt! (As if you couldn't tell, what with all the exclamation marks or, if you want to be old school, bangs.)

This is actually called the "Teaching Resources" page, and it is typically aimed at teachers, but it is a clear and concise way to find all the vast help docs and resources that are sometimes more difficult to find.

https://www.freedomscientific.com/training/teachers/

I attended the first Sight Tech Global Virtual Conference last December, and I learned so much! Topics not only included technology, but disability rights and how AI bias affects visually impaired people. I encourage anyone who wants to learn about the newest technologies for visually impaired people to register for this conference, especially since it's free!

Posted to TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/15/announcing-sight-tech-global-2021/

Shortly after the first Sight Tech Global event, in December last year, Apple and Microsoft announced remarkable new features for mobile phones. Anyone could point the phone camera at a scene and request a "scene description." In a flash, a cloud-based, computer vision AI determined what was in the scene and a machine-voice read the information.

Learning that "a room contains three chairs and a table" might not seem like a big advance for the sighted, but for blind or visually impaired people, the new feature was a notable milestone for accessibility technology: An affordable, portable and nearly universal device could now "see" on behalf of just about anyone.

Technologies like scene description will be on the agenda at the second annual Sight Tech Global event, December 1-2, 2021. The free, sponsor-supported, virtual and global event will convene many of the world's top technologists, researchers, advocates and founders to discuss how rapid advances in technology, many centered on AI, are altering — both improving and complicating — accessibility for people with sight loss.

Register today — it's free.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfberR7NW3F74cBNleiOVauGQ8wrSV0FcZqf1HH5X60mUrS6Q/viewform?fbzx=4093129549110261409

This guide is much more detailed than the brief help pages I have seen previously
https://slack.com/help/articles/360000411963-Use-Slack-with-a-screen-reader#main

And we were there! And do we have the horror stories to prove it--anyone else remember Whispering Wendy? I'm pretty certain she was developed by the male developers so that they could have a sexy throaty female voice, but what they got was a stalker with a meat knife whispering to you in the dark about how she just boiled your bunny rabbit.

Kes: Stanford has a great timeline of the development of accessible technology, which you can find here
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2005-06/accessibility/firstwave.html#:~:text=1986%20%E2%80%93%20Jim%20Thatcher%20created%20the,graphical%20interface%20PCs%20(4).

Kes: This event is more of a crash course in screen readers, and there are scholarships available. You can also read the recent entry
A Brief History of Screen Readers
https://knowbility.org/blog/2021/a-brief-history-of-screen-readers/

Webinar from Knowbility
Screen Readers in the Wild. A Celebration of the 35th Anniversary of the First Screen Reader, Released in 1986
January 25th 2021 8AM PT, 9AM MT, 10AM CT, 11AM ET, 4PM GMT

IBM Researcher and Accessibility Pioneer, Jim Thatcher, created the first screen reader in 1986. The IBM Screen Reader worked with the text-based Desktop Operating System (DOS). It was initially only available within IBM. Jim and his team continued development and released IBM Screen Reader/2 to work with graphical operating systems such as Windows 95 and IBM OS/2.
Price: $35
Register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/screen-readers-in-the-wild-tickets-135342363653

Properly.

And it's inaccessible.

The story is: I was cruising through the MIT IAP courses, as I do, and I ran across a lunchtime series on communicating better with your audience.

This will add extra irony later.

The registration form involved using Handshake, which requires you to use a university account to create the Handshake account.

Well, I don't have an academic account, so I contacted the office asking for assistance in registering.

The person got back to me asking for my MIT alum account, which I hadn't used in years, so I went to the alum website and requested a password reset, and checked what the email was for my alum account.

Which I sent back to the contact person at MIT.

This morning I got an email that said I should use the MIT alum email to create a Handshake account, and I should also fill out a disability accommodations form for MIT.

Note, still no offer to actually help me register for this course.

So I go back to Handshake, which requires that I fill out a bunch of personal info, including selecting my university and my major. I have to select these from these funky edit combo boxes, which are really finicky with a screen reader. I spent about ten minutes fighting with the first one to get my university entered, but I just can't seem to get the second list of majors to show me any of the items, and attempts to type into the edit field are not accepted.

I am now so annoyed --and I haven't even gotten to filling out the accommodations request form yet-- that any desire to register for this course has now completely evaporated.

I have now spent more time trying to register for this talk than the talk actually takes.

And the whole response of Oh, is something inaccessible? Our response is: fill out more forms!

Note: this talk is sponsored by the Career Advising Professional Development.

from the Paciello Group
Posted on Wednesday, 2 December 2020 by Marissa Sapega

Search engine optimization and web accessibility share many of the same best practices.
This guide will help you better understand the overlap between digital accessibility and SEO best practices.
https://www.paciellogroup.com/digital-accessibility-and-seo-tactics/

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by boosting the visibility of a website or a web page by ranking highly on a web search engine (like Google or Bing). This process may involve improving the presentation of existing content or creating new content on specific topics.

SEO and web accessibility can influence many of the same areas of product development
It may come as a surprise to you that SEO and web accessibility have so much overlap. Yet, considering all the elements/components that comprise complicated digital content like a website, it shouldn’t be all that surprising at all.

Here are a few examples:

• Design – Web designers who don’t understand SEO or digital accessibility are at a significant disadvantage; knowledge of both practices should influence their work. For example, designers should strive to avoid using images of text rather than just employing CSS to render it the way they want it to appear. Just like a screen reader, Google web crawlers cannot interpret an image; they can only “understand” the content of a page by reading the code. This means any text on an image will be invisible to both screen reader users and Google crawlers. Though you could add alternative text to the image, that is not the use for which it was created, and alt text isn’t considered appropriate for this situation.
• User Experience (UX) – UX professionals need to create digital environments that minimize frustration and facilitate task completion. One factor Google considers when ranking websites is the on-page experience—if a website is hard to navigate or confusing to visitors, they’ll leave immediately, sending a negative signal to Google that it was a poor user experience. When building a user experience with accessibility in mind, these professionals create a better experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities.
• Technical infrastructure – The “skeleton” of a website, its code, significantly influences SEO and accessibility. Google crawlers and people with visual impairments using screen readers appreciate how a page is structured (e.g., proper headers and sub-headers) because it helps them understand the content of the page without reading all of it.
• Information Architecture – Similarly to the infrastructure, having a logical information architecture allows crawlers and humans to easily access pages in an order that makes sense benefits both SEO and the usability of a website.

Myths about SEO and accessibility

There is a lot of misinformation out there about both these topics. This guide will help you discover the truth behind some common misconceptions and why it’s important to understand them.
continued at
https://www.paciellogroup.com/digital-accessibility-and-seo-tactics/

AccessWorld's December issue is out, and includes its
https://www.afb.org/aw
annual holiday gift guide
https://www.afb.org/aw/21/11/17297

Worth mentioning is a couple of changes this year: all the products are either produced or sold by blind businesspeople and, unlike in previous years, the prices are much more in the affordable range.

The Accessible Kitchen Holiday Shopping Guide
https://www.afb.org/aw/21/11/17296
also works as a crash course in making a kitchen more accessible, whether it is a love one's or your own.

The online shopping guide
https://www.afb.org/aw/21/11/17298
provides detailed descriptions of the apps for three online stores: Amazon, Bed Bath and Beyond, and PetSmart.

The news section
https://www.afb.org/aw/21/11/17294
includes a reminder that the annual
NonVisual Desktop Access Virtual Conference is on December 4-6
https://www.nvdacon.org/
NVDA Con is a virtual conference held online each year by the community of users of the NVDA screen reader. The conference presents sessions on various topics related to NVDA, offers spaces where NVDA users can network, and ends with a keynote address from the developers of NVDA.

Lastly, For the Apple user, Tech Juggernaut has just posted their holiday gift guide. You can access it either as a podcast or read highlights on
the blog post
https://ttjtech.net/2020/11/25/ttj-2020-holiday-gift-guide-now-available/

3 ways to find out what's new in The 2021 versions of Freedom Scientific software
1. This article from Web Friendly Help:
https://webfriendlyhelp.com/new-features-in-jaws-zoomtext-and-fusion-3/
2. Vispero presentation on ACB Community Call, on Thursday, November 19th 2020 at 17:00 GMT:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88275409010?pwd=dlZ1VFozQWlEcHZtSXBBZ25EQzRZdz09
3. The FSOpen Line talk show, on Friday, November 20th 2020 at 01:00 GMT:
https://blog.freedomscientific.com/join-us-for-fsopenline-3/

What Is Android Accessibility Suite?
https://helpdeskgeek.com/free-tools-review/what-is-android-accessibility-suite-a-review/

Looking for daily deliveries about technology-related resources for blind and visually impaired users? Check out
David Goldfield's website
https://davidgoldfield.wordpress.com/home/
or subscribe to his high-volume mailing list by send an email to
tech-vi +key subscribe@io

Researchers Use New Techniques to Make Films More Accessible to Visually Impaired Audiences
The project used enhanced sound techniques, first person narration and spatial audio, to produce an alternative to traditional audio description (AD), which relies on third-person narration.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-techniques-accessible-visually-impaired-audiences.html
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How to Add Siri Shortcuts to iPhone Home Screen
https://mashtips.com/add-siri-shortcuts-to-iphone-home-screen/

How to Add a Text Caption Directly in a Photo in iOS 14
https://ttjtech.net/2020/11/02/how-to-add-a-text-caption-directly-in-a-photo-in-ios-14/

32 Ways to Record Your Screen
This guide focuses on how to record your screen on Windows, Mac, iPhone/iPad, Android with 32 different screen recorders
https://www.videoproc.com/download-record-video/how-to-record-your-screen.htm

Google Home Audio Tutorial From Mystic Access
This is a 6-hour, $39 audio tutorial that covers all aspects of the Google Home personal assistant from a blindness perspective.
https://www.mysticaccess.com/product/audio-tutorial-for-google-home/

Virtual Technology Fair, The Carroll Center for the Blind
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Kes: This first link discusses advances in Microsoft's image recognition technology, which is a pretty big deal for any visually impaired person using
Microsoft's free Seeing AI app
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai
or the Picture Smart feature in Jaws
https://blog.freedomscientific.com/picture-smart-in-jaws-independently-selecting-your-artwork/
which has been improved in the soon-to-be-released Jaws 2021
https://support.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/JAWS/JAWSPublicBeta

Microsoft Announces Breakthrough AI Image Captioning for Word, PowerPoint, Outlook
https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/azure-image-captioning/

Web Friendly Help discusses new features in NVDA
https://webfriendlyhelp.com/new-features-in-nvda-2020-3/

Google Search Tips: Always Find What You're Looking For by Online Tech Tips
https://www.online-tech-tips.com/google-softwaretips/8-google-search-tips-always-find-what-youre-looking-for/

Using Zoom with a Screen Reader on the Eyes on Success podcast
The latest episode features Heather Thomas, author of _Getting Started with Zoom Meetings: A guide for Jaws, NVDA, and iPhone VoiceOver users_.
http://eyesonsuccess.net

1Password: Mosen at Large provides a review and demonstration of this password manager
https://mosenatlarge.pinecast.co/episode/a69030679a8d434b/review-and-demonstration-of-the-1password-password-manager

Facebook Mobile with Chrome and Edge: the mbasic interface is actually the older m.facebook.com interface
https://mbasic.facebook.com/

Jeopardy Makes Online Test Accessible to the Blind
https://www.nfb.org/about-us/press-room/jeopardy-makes-online-test-accessible-blind

RNIB Creates Accessible Pregnancy Test Prototype to Raise Awareness of Accessible Design
In 2020 there is still no fully accessible pregnancy test, meaning that blind and partially sighted women must ask for help to read their tests, and are therefore never the first to know what is happening to their own bodies. The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has unveiled the first accessible pregnancy test prototype that allows women with sight loss to know their results privately for the first time. The groundbreaking test allows the user to feel their results, producing raised nodules to indicate a positive result. Learn more at:.
https://www.dexigner.com/news/33351

A Day in The Connected Digital Life on Tek Talk will discuss Apple products.
GMT Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 00:00
https://zoom.us/j/839935813

Most of these links are culled from the Top Tech Tidbits weekly newsletter: you can view the entire newsletter or subscribe at
https://toptechtidbits.com/

The healthcare policy advocacy group that I participate in had a fascinating speaker this week: Richard Antonelli, who is currently working out of BOston Children's Hospital, and is a researcher for developing metrics that can be used to measure care coordination and care integration, which is a huge, complex, confusing but incredibly vital issue in developing person-centered healthcare policy. You can learn more about what he does here
http://www.nhpf.org/speakerbio_richardantonelli

During a different presentation, I brough up the issue of hearing other consumer express confusion about the different phrases that are used: "care coordinator," "care manager," and one geographically-specific healthcare program that coined the phrase "care partner." At the same time, many of the consumers are using phrases such as "case worker," to refer to their contact person at the health insurance program, which suggests that they are still unclear that this is using a different model than the social welfare system, and this model gives them more agency over making choices.

Bottom line: I get to continue the conversation with someone at the health plan who wants to get a better grasp on what consumers are confused about. Heck, I've been doing this for a couple years now and I'm still confused How much of the word choice is about creating a different and (implied) improved model of delivering health care, and how much is branding to make your plan appear to be different than the others? This is where the intersection of disability advocacy, media studies, and semiotics has brought me: it's an interesting crossroads, but you have to be careful around such trivium.

Also spent huge amounts of time this week learning to use VoiceOver and Google Classroom--I'm still trying to figure out how to move files from Google Classroom to Google Drive (I keep hearing that it's supposed to be automatic, but that appears to be a lie, er, misconception), and NVDA. NVDA is just different enough from Jaws to be tricky, and I haven't figured out why I keep hearing so much of the formatting and field codes (I really do not need to hear about every carriage return, or every cell location of an object in a table).

Oh! And Alexx and I finished watching Mike Flanagan's "The Haunting of Bly Manor," and it was really wonderful, perfectly splendid! (such an innocuous term, and yet, now, so creepy...) Mike Flanagan is a director with the soul of a bibliophile: I am in awe of how much Henry James he must have read to create this series. I'm almost tempted to go back and read the stories Flanagan references in his series, but then I remember how annoying James can be.

Okay, I'm off to risk having my brain explode and do a bit more Voiceover review before lunchtime.

Flatten Inaccessibility Report Illustrates Impact of COVID-19 on Blind and Visually Impaired Adults
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) recently announced the release of the Flatten Inaccessibility research report, which was the culmination of survey findings from 1,921 U.S. participants who are blind (65%) or have low vision (35%).
The survey investigated the experiences of these participants during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to determine how they were affected in areas including access to transportation, healthcare, access to food and supplies, employment, education, and voting:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-foundation-for-the-blind-announces-flatten-inaccessibility-report-illustrating-impact-of-covid-19-on-blind-or-visually-impaired-adults-301140476.html

CNN: Assistive Technology That is Changing Lives
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/05/world/gallery/assistive-technology-spc-intl/index.html

NVDA 2020.3 Released
https://www.nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2020-3/

AppleVis: A Beginner's Guide to Using iOS with VoiceOver
https://www.applevis.com/guides/beginners-guide-using-ios-voiceover

Instructional Courses for Anything Apple by MacForTheBlind
https://blindabilities.com/?p=6220

Mosen at Large Recapping Apple's October 2020 Event From a Blindness Perspective
https://mosenatlarge.pinecast.co/episode/73fefed3e78848b3/recapping-apple-s-october-2020-event-from-a-blindness-perspective

Apple Insider: How To Use Siri's New Queries in iOS 14
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/09/29/how-to-use-siris-new-queries-in-ios-14

Alexa can now ask for clarification on your requests
https://www.wired.com/story/alexa-own-questions-you/
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I'm trying to get an idea of which browser is most popular with screen reader users, and how many of them take advantage of accessibility settings such as reader mode, font preferences, etc.

Of course, WebAIM is the place to go for all things related to accessibility, so here is the results of their 2019 survey
https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/

For both sighted and nonsighted users, the Tech Juggernaut blog has two articles up so far and promises more to come
https://ttjtech.net/blog/

The Freedom Scientific blog has a new post about using Jaws with the new Microsoft Edge browser
https://blog.freedomscientific.com/you-ask-we-answer-4-questions-about-transitioning-to-the-edge-chromium-browser/
The article answers some questions, along with providing tips for making the transition.

More info about exact dates when Microsft will stop supporting IE from the following article
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/17/21372487/microsoft-internet-explorer-11-support-end-365-legacy-edge#content
Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer 11 across its Microsoft 365 apps and services next year. In exactly a year, on August 17th, 2021, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported for Microsoft’s online services like Office 365, OneDrive, Outlook, and more. Microsoft is also ending support for Internet Explorer 11 with the Microsoft Teams web app later this year, with support ending on November 30th.
Meanwhile, there is the
new Internet Explorer legacy mode
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527875/microsoft-chromium-edge-new-features-build-2019
in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser which might help users with the transition.

Kes: This one is going to discuss the next release and how to get involved in beta testing, so I plan on listening.

FSOpenLine, Freedom Scientific’s global call-in show, will take place Thursday, August 27 at 3 P.M. Eastern time.

Do you have questions about our software or hardware products? Want to share an idea? Join us to have your voice heard by key members of Freedom Scientific’s product management and engineering teams.

In this show, we will cover:

The upcoming releases of JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion 2021
How to participate in the upcoming Public Software Beta
How you can help improve Freedom Scientific products through anonymous usage data

Details on how to join can be found on the blog
https://blog.freedomscientific.com/join-us-for-fsopenline-2/