I’ve spoken about web accessibility techniques and tests at many WordCamps and meetups, and I’ve realised that for some people the key to realising why accessibility is so important comes from understanding how people with disabilities actually use the websites we build.
So in this presentation I’m going to demo two pieces of assistive technology, and show you how they are actually used by people who rely on them to access the web.
Featured assistive technology (AT):
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking – voice recognition software, typically used by those with motor impairments for whom using mouse and keyboard is not an option.
- NVDA – a free, open source screen reader, typically used by those who are blind, or with poor eyesight, but also sometimes used by dyslexics and others with cognitive impairments.
Come and learn what it’s like to browse the web from a different perspective.
Here be Dragons. Graham Armfield on Dragon Dictate, Accessibility and testing. #wcedin pic.twitter.com/ZagR5Al9X2
— WordCamp Edinburgh (@wcedin) November 21, 2015
Using assistive technology to test sites really puts in perspective importance of using accessible markup #accessibility #wcedin
— Luda Matkovska (@Luda_M88) November 21, 2015