What screen readers actually do

Understanding how people navigate the web without sight changes how you think about structure, clarity, and the hidden power of good content choices.

Beyond the mystery

When most people think about screen readers, they imagine something vaguely robotic - a computer voice mechanically reading every word on a page from top to bottom. This mental image, while not entirely wrong, misses the sophistication of how screen reader users actually navigate the web and the crucial role that well-structured content plays in making that navigation efficient and meaningful.

Screen readers are powerful, nuanced tools that can jump between headings, skip to lists, navigate by links, and move through content in ways that might surprise you. But they can only work with what you give them. When content is properly structured - with clear headings, descriptive links, and logical flow - screen readers become precision instruments. When content lacks structure, they become blunt instruments, forcing users to work much harder than they should.

Understanding how screen readers work isn't just about compliance or accommodation. It's about recognising that the choices you make in the CMS create or destroy pathways for a significant portion of your audience - pathways that, when built well, often improve the experience for everyone else too.

The scanning advantage

Here's something that might change how you think about screen reader users: they're often faster at finding information than sighted users. Not slower. Faster.

A skilled screen reader user can navigate through a well-structured page by jumping from heading to heading, generating a quick mental outline, and landing exactly where they need to be in seconds. They can pull up a list of all links on a page and scan through them rapidly. They can jump to the next form field, the next table, or the next list without reading through paragraphs of surrounding text.

But this speed and efficiency depends entirely on the page being structured properly. If headings are missing, vague, or incorrectly nested, the advantage disappears. If links all say "click here" or "read more," the scanning becomes meaningless. If lists are faked with dashes instead of proper markup, they become invisible to navigation shortcuts.

The irony is that screen reader users often have superior mental models of well-structured content because they're forced to rely on logical hierarchy rather than visual layout. They know immediately when a page is poorly organised because their tools can't make sense of it.

When a screen reader user lands on a page, they have multiple strategies for finding what they need, depending on what they're looking for and how familiar they are with the site.

Heading navigation is perhaps the most powerful tool available. Most screen readers allow users to press "H" to jump to the next heading, or specific numbers (1, 2, 3) to jump to specific heading levels. This creates a kind of outline view of the page - but only if headings are used properly and describe actual content sections.

Imagine you're a screen reader user looking for eligibility information on a service page. You land on the page and press "H" to hear the headings: "About our services," "Eligibility requirements," "How to apply," "Contact information." You press "2" to jump directly to the H2 level and hear "Eligibility requirements," then press Enter to go to that section. Total time: perhaps ten seconds.

Now imagine the same page with poor heading structure. You press "H" and hear: "Welcome," "More information," "Other details," "Contact." These headings tell you nothing about the content. You have no choice but to listen to paragraphs of text, hoping to eventually stumble across eligibility information. What should have taken seconds now takes minutes - if you don't give up entirely.

Link navigation works similarly but differently. Users can press "K" to jump between links, or pull up a complete list of all links on the page. This is incredibly powerful when links are descriptive: "Download the referral form," "Check eligibility requirements," "Book an assessment." It becomes useless when every link says "click here" or "learn more" - you end up with a list that looks like: "Click here, click here, learn more, click here, read more." Without context, these links are meaningless.

Landmark navigation takes advantage of HTML's structural elements. Screen readers can jump to the main content area, the navigation menu, the footer, or sidebar content directly. This helps users orient themselves on a page and skip past repeated elements like navigation menus they've already heard on other pages.

The sequential experience

While screen readers excel at jumping around structured content, they also experience pages sequentially when needed. This sequential experience reveals things that visual layout often masks.

When a sighted user looks at a page, they might see a sidebar with contact information that visually appears alongside the main content. But screen readers typically encounter that sidebar after all the main content, or sometimes before it, depending on how the page is coded. If the sidebar contains important contextual information - like "Before reading about our services, note that we only serve the Perth metro area" - its placement in the reading order matters enormously.

This is why content structure matters beyond just headings and links. The order in which elements appear in the code affects the order in which screen readers encounter them. A form field that appears visually next to its label might be separated from that label in the reading order, making it impossible to understand what information is being requested.

Tables are particularly revealing in sequential reading. A data table about service fees that makes perfect visual sense - with clear columns for service type, duration, and cost - becomes a confusing stream of information if it's not properly marked up with headers. Instead of "Speech therapy, 45 minutes, $120," a screen reader might announce "Speech therapy forty-five one hundred twenty," leaving the user to guess which numbers refer to time and which to cost.

The mental model difference

Screen reader users develop sophisticated mental models of web content because they can't rely on visual scanning to paper over structural problems. They're forced to understand how pages are actually organised, not just how they appear to be organised.

This creates an interesting dynamic: screen reader users often have clearer expectations about how content should be structured than sighted users. They expect headings to reflect actual hierarchy. They expect links to be descriptive and meaningful. They expect forms to have clear labels and logical tab order. When these expectations are met, their experience is excellent. When they're not met, the experience degrades rapidly.

This is why the phrase "screen reader friendly" misses the point. Good structure isn't a special accommodation for screen readers - it's good structure, period. Screen readers just make poor structure more obviously problematic because they can't compensate with visual layout.

Real scenarios, real friction

Consider Sarah, a blind social worker, trying to help a family find speech therapy services. She visits your website looking for information about eligibility, wait times, and how to make a referral.

Scenario 1: Well-structured content Sarah presses "H" to jump between headings: "Services overview," "Eligibility requirements," "Referral process," "Expected wait times." She presses "2" to go to "Eligibility requirements," quickly scans the content, then jumps to "Referral process." She finds a link that says "Download referral form (PDF)" and another that says "Contact our intake coordinator." Total time on site: three minutes. She has everything the family needs.

Scenario 2: Poorly structured content Sarah lands on the same page, but the headings are "Welcome," "About us," "More information," "Contact." She has no idea which section contains eligibility information. She starts reading from the top, listening to a lengthy welcome message, then detailed background about the organisation's history. Five minutes in, she still hasn't found eligibility information. She tries jumping to links, but they all say "click here" and "learn more." She either spends fifteen minutes hunting for information that should take two minutes to find, or she gives up and calls instead - assuming your phone number was easy to find, which it probably wasn't.

The difference between these scenarios isn't about Sarah's skills or her screen reader's capabilities. It's entirely about the content structure decisions you make in your CMS.

The ripple effects

When content works well for screen reader users, it typically works well for many other groups too. Voice interface users benefit from the same clear structure that helps screen readers. Search engines use similar signals to understand content hierarchy and meaning. People using keyboard navigation rely on the same logical tab order and link descriptions. Users with cognitive processing differences benefit from clear headings and predictable organisation.

This is why understanding screen readers matters even if you never expect to use one yourself. They're like canaries in the coal mine for content structure - when content doesn't work for screen readers, it's often not working optimally for anyone, even if the problems are less visible.

What this means for your daily work

Every time you add a heading in the CMS, you're creating a navigation point for screen reader users. Vague headings like "More details" create false signals. Descriptive headings like "Eligibility for NDIS participants" create useful navigation landmarks.

Every link you create either adds to a meaningful navigation list or clutters it with noise. "Click here" adds noise. "Download our services brochure (PDF)" adds signal.

Every time you structure content with proper lists instead of faking them with dashes, you create navigation shortcuts. Screen reader users can jump to lists and move through them item by item, but only if they're marked up as actual lists.

Even your image alt text contributes to the overall experience. Screen readers announce when images have no alt text, creating little interruptions in the flow. They also announce when alt text is unhelpful ("image001.jpg") or overly verbose. Good alt text integrates seamlessly into the content flow.

The expertise you already have

You don't need to become a screen reader expert to make good decisions for screen reader users. You already understand logical organisation, clear communication, and helpful navigation - these are the same skills that create good structure for screen readers.

The main shift is recognising that structure and presentation are different things. Something can look organised without being organised. Something can appear to be a heading without actually being marked as a heading. Something can seem like a clear navigation system to sighted users while being completely opaque to screen reader users.

Your role is to ensure that the logical structure of your content matches its apparent structure - and that both are as clear and helpful as possible.

Check your understanding

Copy and paste this to ChatGPT when you're ready for feedback:

I've been completing some questions that have been presented to me as part of an SEO course. I'm currently answering questions for a section titled "What screen readers actually do". Please check my answers and let me know if I've understood the key ideas correctly. My responses are below.

1. What advantage do skilled screen reader users often have when navigating well-structured content?

They can see visual layouts that others miss
They can navigate faster than sighted users by jumping between structural elements
They don't need to read through as much content
They have better memory for website layouts

2. Why does the phrase "screen reader friendly" miss the point about good content structure?

3. Which heading structure would be most useful for a screen reader user looking for eligibility information?

"Welcome," "About us," "More information," "Contact"
"Introduction," "Details," "Other," "Questions"
"Services overview," "Eligibility requirements," "Referral process," "Wait times"
"Page 1," "Page 2," "Page 3," "Page 4"

4. A screen reader user visits your services page and presses "K" to jump through links. They hear: "Click here, learn more, click here, read more, click here." What problem does this reveal, and how does it affect their ability to find information quickly?

5. Explain how good content structure benefits screen reader users and other groups simultaneously. Give at least two examples of overlapping benefits.

6. A content editor insists that making headings "too descriptive" creates repetitive, awkward content that "reads badly for normal users." They prefer shorter, more creative headings that "sound more professional." Evaluate this tension between descriptive structure and perceived content quality, and explain how to balance these concerns while maintaining accessibility.