Screen Reader Users

A screen reader is a piece of software that reads the content of a computer screen loud.

 In order to make sure your website works on a screen reader, Web Services is constantly working behind the scene to improve the technical aspects of your website. 

Fixes for screen readers also have the beauty of being good for search engine optimization. If a screen reader can understand your content, so can a crawler compiling information for Google. 

Alternative Text

There are some things you can do to make your website more accessible to screen reader users. Number 1 is writing alternative text (alt tags) for your images, which we’ve written about at length.

Heading Order

Another important area for screen reader compliance is your headings. Your headings should be in order, so that they form a document outline. Headings should not go, for instance h1 then h3. A h2 should be nested inside an h1, and a h3 should be nested a h2, and so forth. There are other important issues around headings, which you can read more about in our guide to headings.

Link Text

Just as with the headings, a screen reader user often isolates all the links on a page. Hearing “click here” 12 times is not helpful. Instead, you should describe the action and content of the destination.

You can find more information in our guide to writing link text.

Other Notes

Another important practice is to make sure all your content is readable text. No images of words, no audio or video content without transcripts. 

Additional Resources

• Designing for users of screen readers by the UK Home Office
• Siteimprove has some great articles on a variety of accessibility topics