The screen reader deals with web page content in a very different
manner from visual rendering. Without knowing the structure of
the interface, people risk spending a great deal of time exploring
without ever reaching the important elements.
Figure 1 shows the screen reader’s interpretation of the original
(left) and modified (right) result pages. Italics refer to
words/sentences inserted by the screen reader, informing the user
about interface elements (link, button, edit field, heading level
and so on). New parts, added when we re-engineered the
interface, are highlighted in bold. Note how the different order of
the sections in the code has changed the screen reader’s sequential
reading. In the modified UIs the results are the first elements
announced. Each result is numbered and separated by a blank line
(a pause) from the following while in the original UIs there is no
clear separation between results, which may be confusing.
A test was sent to each participant in electronic format by e-mail
or in a form accessible via Web