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Web Development vocabulary · Accessibility

Screen reader

Meaning in web development, with examples

nounCore term

In web development, screen reader means: Software that reads the content of a screen aloud or sends it to a braille display, used mainly by blind and visually impaired people.

In Turkish: ekran okuyucu

How it is used

Well-known screen readers are NVDA and JAWS on Windows, VoiceOver on Apple devices and TalkBack on Android. Developers test pages with a screen reader and check what it 'announces' for each element.

Example sentences

  1. The screen reader just says 'button' because the icon button has no label.

  2. Test the checkout with a screen reader such as VoiceOver before the release.

Common collocations

  • screen reader user
  • test with a screen reader
  • screen reader announces
  • screen-reader-only text
  • accessibilityThe practice of making websites usable by everyone, including people who are blind or deaf, have limited movement or use assistive technology.
  • alt textA short written description of an image, added with the alt attribute, that screen readers read aloud and browsers show if the image fails to load.
  • ARIAAccessible Rich Internet Applications: a set of HTML attributes, such as role and aria-label, that give assistive technology extra information about elements.
  • semantic HTMLHTML that uses elements according to their meaning, such as nav, main, article and button, instead of generic div and span elements for everything.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Accessibility

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