Screen readers are software programs that convert digital text into synthesized speech. They allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen. Screen readers announce the page title (the ＜title＞ element in the HTML markup), headings, links, and the alt text (description) for images. To get an overall impression of a page's content, users can jump from heading to heading, from link to link, and from paragraph to paragraph.
Accessibility tools, such as WAVE (https://wave.webaim.org), will flag accessibility issues on websites, but cannot tell you if web content is accessible. Only a human can determine true accessibility. Tools will flag certain accessibility errors and warnings, but, for example, cannot detect embedded text on images.
The WAVE Summary View presents your page with embedded accessibility icons and indicators.
- Red icons indicate accessibility errors that need to be fixed.
- Yellow icons indicate alerts to possible issues.
- The other icons and indicators highlight other elements about the site.
From the Details tab, you can click on an icon to view the item on the page.
Reference View displays an explanation of the element you're viewing.
The related code displays at the bottom of the page.
No Styles view is very useful to access errors and alerts for complex career sites or sites with fixed headers. Turning off Styles displays your page with tables linearized. This view presents the underlying reading and navigation order, the order in which keyboard-only and screen reader users will access the page.
Contrast View shows only contrast issues on your page, based on WCAG 2.0 guidelines. You can use the tools in the panel to change the color contrast until it receives a 'pass' report, and take note of the updated colors that meet these guidelines, to change the site.
The Structure tab displays the headings on the page.
