Which Screen Reader Would Be Best to Test Site Accessibility and How to Configure That

Which screen reader would be best to test site accessibility and how to configure that?

I will preface this answer by stating I’m a totally blind individual who uses Jaws as there only screen reader. I've played around with NVDA as well but have l9imited experience with it. Jaws is the most widely used screen reader at least in the US. If you can only use one screen reader I would pick it with the default settings. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox work with Jaws and both are widely used. Another screen reader you could use to test accessibility is NVDA this is an open source screen reader that works well with Firefox but not internet explorer. I would say if cost is an issue use NVDA with the latest version of Firefox, and if your site is accessible using that setup it will most likely work with Jaws. For a complete list of screen reading software see this

Installing and starting a screen reader isn't enough to do good accessibility testing. You won't know how accessible your site is until you turn off your monitor and unplug your mouse. Getting good enough at using any screen reader to do that will take time. The only sighted people I know that are efficient screen reader users either work for the screen reader companies, or do assistive technology training as their job. So while you can use a screen reader to test your site's accessibility the learning curve for a realistic test is quite high.

Site accessibility: what screen readers, etc to test against, and how?

See this question
As the question implies if you want good screen reading testing you either need to hire someone to do the testing for you that has a lot of screen reader experience or invest the time in having developers and or QA learn a screen reader well. To my knolidge there is nothing like Selenium that can simulate how a screen reader handles a website. FOr general info on accessibility see
http://www.w3.org/WAI/gettingstarted/
This appears to have a lot of good information and covers all kinds of accessibility, not just blindness.
For a list of tools to check html accessibility see
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/complete.html
Although these tools will help they are not a substitute for screen reading testing. For a discussion of some of the problems with relying only on automated tools see
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/automated-tools.shtml

Screen Readers For Testing Website Accessibility

Just because something meets the guideline doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be accessible, all screen readers have there different quirks. I'm a totally blind individual so comments on screen readers are below.

Note this is a rather long post so I’ve summarized it at the top. In summary if you want to make sure your site is mostly accessible use NVDA, if you want to make sure that blind individuals working in the government will be able to use your site use Jaws to test, if you want to be extra safe use Window-Eyes and Orca to test as well.

NVDA is an open source screen reader that is rather new. It isn't quite as good as some of the commercial screen readers out there but it gets the job done. I'd say if a site works with NVDA it's likely to work with most other screen readers. One issue with NVDA is the fact that its accessibility is only really good in Firefox so you'll have to use that to test.

Jaws is the most widely used screen reader out there. You can download a demo of it that will run for 40 minutes at a time then require you to reboot if you want to run it again. If you’re trying to insure 508 compliance this is probably the way to go since Jaws is the screen reader used by the US government.

Window-Eyes is the second most used screen reader. I don’t have any experience with it but I’ve been told it’s quite good as far as internet accessibility goes. Orca is a screen reader built into gnome that works with Firefox and Linux. It’s built into Ubuntu. I tried it about a year and a half ago and it was absolutely horrible but I’ve been told it’s gotten better.

Do we need to test the accessibility of our application using real devices like screen readers, etc.?

Short Answer

Automated tools are not sufficient to catch all accessibility issues. You need to test with assistive tech.

Longer Answer

Yes you will need to use a screen reader to test, as well as a screen magnifier, checking captions etc.

Automated tools only pick up about 40% of errors, so this is why automated tools alone will not help you make the site accessible.

Ideally real user testing is the best way, giving them tasks to perform such as purchasing product XXX so they can give feedback for barriers they face. However I know this can be cost prohibitive / hard to organise.

So you should use automated tools to catch the easy problems, then use assistive tech to catch problems such as keyboard traps, unclear labelling etc.

It is worth having a checklist while you are starting out, and ideally you would want an accessibility consultant in the early stages to help guide you through WCAG and (if appropriate) ATAG etc.

A great tool for starting out is Microsoft's Accessibility Insights for Web as it will run an automated test for the things that can be caught automatically, and can then guide you through the manual testing process for nearly every other issue type...and it is free!

One final thing to note, WCAG 2.2 is close to release, so maybe have a look at the WCAG 2.1 to WCAG 2.2 changes so you are "ahead of the curve".

How do you test if your HTML page or application is accessible?

If you are looking for a quick spot check, you can use WebAIM's WAVE, which tells you the big errors. If you wish to dig deeper, you both need an understanding of WCAG 2.0, and assistive technology. WebAIM has a checklist for WCAG 2.0, which would be the next step, along-side using assistive technology. People tend to only think assistive technology = screen readers, but this is incorrect. There are many different types of assistive technology. I recommend reading through the note at the top of the checklist.

NVDA is a free screen reader

Can we automate Screen Reader testing for web accessibility

Short answer is no, you cannot effectively do this.

However there are lots of automated tools that will identify around 40% of accessibility errors, such as empty links etc.

The reason you need to test manually is that they cannot test for things like logical tab order, keyboard traps etc.

Axe do a decent plugin for Google Chrome that is reasonably good as a starting point. Look in the Play store for that.

Other than that, learn how to use a screen reader (it doesn't take long) and test the site manually, you will pick up accessibility issues far quicker and learn more than trying to follow rules etc.

Accessibility automated testing

One of the rules of StackOverflow is to not ask for product recommendations. If your question is simply, "just wondering if there are any automated tools available", then the answer is "yes", there are automated tools.

If you're asking for the names of products, that would be considered a recommendation and strays into subjective opinions.

Doing a google search for automated accessibility testing will give you a lot of options. The W3C has a nice list of 160 different tools.

Note that since a lot of WCAG can be subjective (WCAG 2.4.6 "Headings and labels describe topic or purpose" - who decides if the description is sufficient?), automated tools can't catch everything. The general number that seems to be accepted is that automated tools can find 20-30% of accessibility issues. To find all issues, manual testing has to be done.

Is there an online emulating screen reader tool to test against a custom web page?

No. At least not one that is any good nor represents how a screen reader actually reads a page or responds to ARIA.

The best answer is to test in real screen readers, ideally by getting real users as they know how to use these tools. Consider contacting your local blind association and see if they offer testing services.

Screen Readers

Each platform has a screen reader, most are built in. Windows has the most variety.

For Windows

• Use Narrator (it is built in, though not very good right now it is getting much better). Use it with Edge.

• Download the free NVDA screen reader (but please donate to support it). Use it with Firefox

• Download JAWS and use it in 40 minute increments for free. Use it with IE11.

For macOS

• Use VoiceOver (it is built in). Use it with Safari.

For iOS

• Use VoiceOver (it is built in). Use it with Safari.

For Android

• Use TalkBack. Use it with Firefox.

For Ubuntu

• Use Orca.

For ChromeOS

• Use ChromeVox (but only use ChromeVox in this scenario, not as a plug-in for Chrome on Windows or macOS).

Resources

These are handy to get started with testing on your own. Keyboard shortcuts are necessary to use a screen reader well, beyond just hitting the Tab key over and over and over.

• Basic screen reader commands for accessibility testing

• Screen readers and web browsers – what’s the best pairing for testing?

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