A short guide to screen readers

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Everything we would tell a client about screen readers in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What is actually at stake

Test with one and the theory becomes obvious. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

Where to start

Correct markup does most of the work. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

Common failure modes

Announced changes need live regions. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

How to tell if yours is fine

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. Three things worth confirming about screen readers before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Test with one and the theory becomes obvious — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.