Assesiablity with Screen Reader

Questions
1

I am trying to improve screen reader accessibility on some of my activities, but I am having some trouble. I am using a Macbook Air with Sequoia OS and VoiceOver on Chrome screen reader. I used the teacher preview and have used a student version with the text to speech mode on, both with VoiceOver enabled.

Here is an activity that I have been practicing with: (Screen Reader Test • Activity Builder by Desmos Classroom)

  1. The image has alt text, but I am not able to get it be read. Is there a way to get focus on the image and have it read?

  2. The graph has narration in the CL, but it’s not read. I would like the narration to be read when the graph has focus. I was able to get around this a little by making the triangle clickable and adding alt text, but I would like to use the narration command in CL. I tried using narration(1): in the CL, but it the narration still wasn’t read.

  3. The text to speech works for the note component, but the distance formula is read as latex, is there a way around that?

Thanks in advance for any help!

2

Hi Kevin! I love that you’re thinking about how to improve the accessibility of your activities!

To get both alt text and narrations to read out loud, you’ll need to use keyboard shortcuts. First, tab to make sure your focus is somewhere within the Activity Builder window. Then use control + option + left or right arrow to navigate through each component. You should be able to hear both the image description and the narration that way. This accessibility page has a lot of information about screen readers and the keyboard shortcuts that you might find helpful.

The latex is always going to be read that way. How it reads the math is based on MathSpeak. It’s more technical than how we would say the distance formula, but the start root, left parenthesis, and so on, help to make sure there’s no ambiguity or need to assume where different symbols start and end for someone who is using a screen reader.