difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation

Léonie is Director of TetraLogical; a member of the W3C Advisory Board; co-Chair of the W3C Web Applications Working Group; and a member of the BIMA Inclusive Design Council.

Amongst other things, Léonie is co-organiser of the Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) conference; co-author of the Inclusive Design Principles; and mentor to young people interested in the fields of accessibility and inclusive design. She is also a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP).

This is from her article The difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation.

People often include screen reader users in the much larger group of keyboard-only users. Whilst this is correct (most screen reader users don't use a mouse), it also creates a false impression of the way screen reader users navigate content.

To help explain this, I'm going to generalise and refer to the two following groups of people:

Keyboard users: people who don't use a mouse but can see the content.
Screen reader users: people who don't use a mouse and can't see the content.

This is a massive over-simplification of the different groups, but the ability to see the content or not is the crux of the difference in navigation.

Keywords: accessible, accessibility, digital inclusion, A11y, human rights

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difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation

difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation

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