Accessibility Challenge: What challenges can you discover when using assistive technology on a website?

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Title: Trying out accessibility tools

Time: 15-20 minutes

Purpose:
To explore one type of assistive technology or accessibility feature and reflect on the experience of using it. This gives you a better understanding of the challenges some users may face and how these tools support access to digital content.

Activity:

  • Choose one of the following tools or features:
    • JAWS (screen reader)
    • Magnification (screen magnifier)
    • Focus Indicator
    • Clear Tab Order
    • Subtitles
  • Try it out or observe how it works on a website or digital content.
  • As you explore, consider:
    • What challenges did you encounter using or testing this feature?
    • Was it easy to use or confusing at times?
    • Did anything surprise you about how it worked or how content responded?
  • Write a short summary (just a few sentences) explaining which technology you used and what your experience was lik
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I tried the screen magnifier. When magnifying a relatively normal sized screen ( 15 inch laptop) to 200% the first thing i noticed was that some style elements were now out of place. Some boxes could no longer contain the text they were meant to. An other thing was that for big tables, only one result line was now visible and a lot of scrolling was required to see that complete line as well. Although I’m not sure how big of an issue this is…

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So I installed JAWS software on my laptop and tried to read my own article on the MoT website. However, I faced a few issues while doing that :

  1. If I don’t press the Tab button, then JAWS software starts reading on its own, however, after reading the title of the article, instead of starting with the content of the article, it starts reading the hyperlink of different items on the right side of the article

  2. JAWS couldn’t detect the starting paragraphs of the article however, it detected only the topic of the article, which is a hyperlink.
    So it seems JAWS struggles with identifying text in the article, but it detects the hyperlink easily.
    Apart from that, I also faced a bit issue in starting JAWS and aligning with my article, as sometimes it keeps repeating the title of the article on loop and doesn’t move forward.

This was my first time exploring the JAWS tool for self learning, and so far, the tool seems to be decent and very helpful for those having visual disabilities or any other visual-related issues.