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Tools for Verifying Accessibility

Recommended Accessibility and Assistive Technologies

Justin Romack

Accessibility requires purposeful and deliberate design and development of content and experiences to ensure they promote equitable access for disabled individuals. It is critical to have a strong toolbox of accessibility and assistive technologies to both create accessible resources and to also verify the work being done fosters the level of access we intend and anticipate.

The tools provided in this chapter are used in various ways throughout the accessibility life cycle and could be helpful resources as you work to create, revise, and publish accessible materials in your course and programs. When applicable, we will provide details on acquiring licensing for tools freely-available to TAMU community members.

Text-to-Speech

Read&Write

Read&Write is a cross-platform text-to-speech and literacy tool which offers support for reading, writing, studying, and more. Text-to-speech software can be particularly useful to students with learning, cognitive, or mental health disabilities because it assists students in processing text so they can more easily comprehend and make meaning of what is being presented. Read&Write has a wide set of customizable settings (including voice and speaking rate) and will also highlight words as it reads along. Any accessible text can be used with Read&Write due to its variety of cross-platform offerings, including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and browser support via extensions for Chrome, Edge, and Safari.

Read&Write is a great option to check the accessibility of text (specifically whether or not the text is readable and in what order assistive technology will read it) because it is very easy to install and use. You can also view several Read&Write demo videos to help you get started. TAMU faculty, staff, and students can use the university’s licensing for Read&Write by downloading Read&Write for their preferred platform and logging into the applicaiton with either their TAMU Google or Microsoft account. (Please note: Departmental or vanity email addresses may not work and you should use your @TAMU.edu email address instead.)

For questions about the university’s license for Read&Write, please contact Assistive Technology Services by email at ats@disability.tamu.edu.

ReadSpeaker

ReadSpeaker is another text-to-speech solution that offers a wide variety of customization for voices which can be a secondary option to read and review your content for accessibility. One interesting differentiator for ReadSpeaker is its close connection to Canvas and the accessibility of documents and materials inside the LMS. While TAMU does not yet have licensing available for this app, ReadSpeaker is one of only a few tools that are accessible with Respondus and can be easily integrated into the LMS environment.

EquatIO

EquatIO is a tool that can support the reading and writing of accessible math. While a valuable tool to support students with learning or physical disabilities that make math input challenging, content authors can benefit from EquatIO’s suite of tools to create accessible math in documents, websites, and LMS products like Canvas.

(Please note: TAMU does not have licensing for this product, but educators can receive a free trial to see if EquatIO assists in their content creation processes.)

Screen Reading

JAWS

  • Platform: Windows
  • Developer: Freedom Scientific
  • Website: Visit the website for JAWS
  • Cost: $95/year for Annual Home subscription / Free to TAMU faculty/staff/students with active TAMU email account

JAWS or Job Access with Speech) is a powerful screen reading solution for Windows which continues to be the most dominant choice for blind and visually impaired screen readers according to a 2024 study by WebAIM [1]. TAMU faculty, staff, and students can use the university’s institutional access to JAWS by doing the following:

  1. Visit the Freedom Scientific Licensing Portal.
  2. Register as a new user with your official TAMU email. (NOTE: Departmental or vanity email addresses that do not end in @TAMU.edu may be ineligible because these subdomains are not included with our current licensing.)
  3. Once registered, you can log into the licensing portal and download your activation file for use on up to three computers. (NOTE: These can be university-owned devices as well as your own personal computers.)
  4. Download the latest version of JAWS.
  5. Install JAWS. You will likely need to restart your machine before launching the application.
  6. Run the activation file you downloaded and this will license your version of JAWS.

For any questions about the university’s license of JAWS, please feel free to contact Assistive Technology Services by email at ats@disability.tamu.edu.

NVDA

NVDA (or Nonvisual Desktop Access) is a free, open-source screen reader available for Windows. Because NVDA is lightweight and easy to obtain, it is a great tool to have when testing content for screen reader accessibility. NVDA tends to be a little less forgiving in adapting to accessibility issues, so testing with this app can give you a more realistic picture of the actual accessibility of your content. Many of the same concepts from JAWS apply to NVDA and there is also a quick reference resource available to get started.

Narrator

Narrator is a basic screen reader pre-installed on all windows machines. You can simply press CTRL + Windows key + Enter and Narrator’s speech feedback should notify you that the screen reader is active. You can view a Narrator quick reference guide to learn how to get started.

Screen Magnification

Fusion

Fusion combines the crystal-clear magnification of ZoomText with the speech support of JAWS to offer a magnification and screen reading product to support access for the widest variety of visual disabilities. For those creating and reviewing accessible content, you can experience magnification and speech simultaneously to better understand how those with visual disabilities might use your content.

Magnifier(Mac)

Apple offers a built-in magnifier for its desktop and mobile platforms. Formerly called Zoom, Magnifier can increase the zoom across the operating system. Other vision features can change the contrast, and brightness, and apply various color filters to aid unique needs for presentation and display.

Magnifier (Windows)

A built-in magnification in Windows, Magnifier helps individuals zoom into areas on the screen in all applications.

Dictation and Voice Control

Dragon

Dragon is the gold standard for speech recognition and voice control. While its price tag is a bit bulky for occasional testing, Dragon is a superior solution for those who have limited or no dexterity or motor control and need to complete involved tasks with a mouse. For basic testing, Dragon is likely too much for the average scenario.

Voice Control

Apple has a built-in speech recognition and voice control app which offers the ability to control most aspects of the computer by speech alone.

Voice Typing

Voice Access offers hands-free control of actions and text dictation through spoken feedback in Windows. Using various commands, you can access controls and navigate with your voice to ensure all aspects of your content are navigable for those with physical disabilities using assistive technologies like speech access.

Document Remediation

ABBYY Fine Reader PDF

ABBYY Fine Reader is a powerful AI-infused optical character recognition (OCR) tool that quickly and efficiently assists in the recognition and remediation of PDF and other document types. Please note: ABBYY will apply some structured tags necessary for full PDF and document accessibility, but it will be necessary in most instances to export content from ABBYY to apply tags and structure in in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat.

MathType

  • Platform: MS Word/Google Workspace/Canvas and others
  • Developer: Wirus
  • Website: Visit the website for MathType
  • Cost: $61.95/year (does not include 20% academic pricing discount)

MathType is a versatile math and equation editor that allows for authoring using point-and-click design of content or importing of LaTeX to produce accessible math in documents and websites. MathType can export content into MathML for embedding and use in web-based content on websites and in LMS products to promote the accessibility of math.

  1. WebAIM found 40.5% of 1,539 individuals surveyed said JAWS was their primary desktop screen reader. ↵

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Recommended Accessibility and Assistive Technologies Copyright © 2024 by Justin Romack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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