Periodic reminder — I have it on good authority that for folks using screen readers, it's nicer if links are attached to text like this, rather shared as a bare URL like

<http://etc>

. Thanks everyone!

Oh I had no idea this has accessibility benefits! ✍🏽

Wondering: are there sandboxed screen reader setups that would help authors to "preread" (rather than preview) their work without perturbing their standard work environment?

Not sure what you mean by "sandboxed". One thing I've heard is that it's worth testing with whatever accessibility features are built-in to your OS (so on Mac that'd be VoiceOver), since that'll be what a lot of people use. Buuut these OS-native features also have quirks and shortcomings, so testing just with those is not exhaustive.

As I understood it, sandboxed = easy to turn screenreader on and off. I'm going to ask an expert on Mastodon.

"Sandboxed" means "not perturbing my standard setup". I'd like to go into screen reader mode for a while and then back to normal. Not just "screenreader off", but "no screenreader present", as I assume that the mere presence of a screenreader can cause compatibility issues with other software. "Whatever is built into the OS" is... probably nothing, under Linux.

@Ivan Reese: I'm converted. I just went through and switched the last year+ of posts on my site replacing bare URLs with some descriptive text. @Konrad Hinsen: I spent some time researching it yesterday, and it's definitely not nothing under Linux. There's OS integration built in for say the Orca screenreader, which the OS will use if you install it. You do still have to install it, though. Also I ran into an error, so there's that.

Thanks @Kartik Agaram for investigating! I didn't mean to imply that there is nothing for Linux. One screen reader I have been aware of for years is EmacSpeak (for Emacs). But there is nothing "built in", and thus no obvious default that people would turn to. Orca looks more mainstream than EmacSpeak, being part of the GNOME universe. I don't use GNOME, but I could easily set up a second account on my machine using GNOME and Orca, and use that for testing. So... you have answered my question!

Thanks so much for this reminder @Ivan Reese @Konrad Hinsen it isn’t exactly what you are looking for, but your question inspired me to dump a bunch of notes from talks I’ve given at work on screen readers on to my web page. It may help to address some of the questions you had — if you have any further questions I’d love to know, too, and I’ll do my best to expand the page to answer them.

Thanks @Eli Mellen! You answer a question I didn't know I should have asked!

Oh cool! I’d love to know, which!

@Eli Mellen The question of how screen readers work from a user's perspective, and how they hook into the OS.

Oh, perfect! It’s a gnarly topic, something I’ve spent a bunch of time with.