Speech and Braille output software

Who it is for

Screen readers, also known as audio output and speech output are used by people who are blind to "listen" to web pages.

What it does

Screen readers output verbally what you would otherwise see. This includes everything from start up screens, desktop and tool bars, all software packages and browsers.

Screen readers work with standard browsers to read the content elements on any given web page.

How it works

Screen readers and refreshable braille displays are one software package. To use the braille output, a braille keypad hardware is attached to the length of a keyboard and small pins are pushed up to output the content in braille.

Users rely solely on the keyboard to navigate around a page using various keyboard commands. (being a non-visual medium it is not possible to use a mouse.)

When a page downloads in a browser the screen reader will start reading the page starting with the title in the title bar, URL and then the page content.

To navigate the page the tab key can be used to tab from one element to the next, up or down.

This includes all types of images, links, form fields, buttons, objects and so on.

Other commands exist such as listing the links in a page, frame headings and the page headings.

The screen reader will identify each element as it reads it out, for example if it is a link to “About us” the screen reader will say “Link, About us”, if it is a graphic that is a button for “Go” it will read “Button, go”.

Extra info

Popular screen readers and refreshable braille displays are Jaws, Window-Eyes and Hal.

Drawbacks

It is vital for screen reader users that websites obey the highest standards of coding for headers, links, and other page elements. We endeavour to maintain those standards on the GMC’s site.

More information

For further information please see the RNIB information on speech and Braille output (RNIB website).