Presented at 1:45 pm in Denver 1-3 on Thursday, November 20, 2025.
#41219Speaker(s)
- Deneb Pulsipher, Captain Accessible, SeaMonster Studios
- Akosua (Kosi) Asabere, Digital Accessibility Engineer/Lead Accessibility Specialist, Desert Wing Design
Session Details
- Length of Session: 2-hr
- Format: Lab
- Expertise Level: Beginner
- Type of session: General Conference
Summary
In this session you’ll finally gain the abilities you need to perform effective screen reader testing by learning and practicing the necessary functionality of the free screen reader of your choice. We’ll break down for you the commands and strategies of screen reader use, walk you through some guided and independent practice to increase your proficiency with it, and help you understand how to present your findings so your accessibility suggestions will be heeded.
Abstract
In this session we’ll prepare you to perform effective screen reader testing. Accessibility professionals all know screen reader testing is important, but the barrier to entry is fairly high: before you can test with a screen reader, you have to know how to use a screen reader. Wrapping your mind around all those keystrokes and what they do can be difficult. We’ll break it down for you, showing you as you use the free screen reader of your choice to go through our Screen Reader Ropes Course that it’s not as complicated as it might seem.
Beyond just explaining the theory, we’ll give you the chance to begin getting comfortable with the experience, and even begin developing some muscle memory for it. Make sure you bring your laptop and cellphone because you’ll be practicing plenty throughout the session.
In between rounds of practice, we’ll explore the differences between how visual web surfers get around the web, and how screen reader users do. We’ll dig deep into why, because of those differences, it’s optimal to pair native screen reader users with native visual users so both can explore what an equivalent experience would be like, and they can give balanced recommendations for remediations to site owners and others.
Finally, we'll show you how to take your testing to the next level by adding language to your reports that brings a deep understanding of the problem. We'll teach you how to describe what an ideal interaction for a screen reader user would be for the examined components. We'll train you to explore the problematic aspects of the current experience. This will make it so that those you communicate with will gain a deep-seated sense of the inequality they've been unknowingly perpetuating. You may already understand it, but helping others to get it too is a whole separate process that we'll train you in.
Keypoints
- Develop some proficiency in the free screen readers using our Screen Reader Ropes Course and live websites.
- Compare visual/screen-reader navigation. Learn why paired testing is best but how to screen reader test alone.
- Document accessibility issues clearly for developers. Use key phrases to explain screen-reader user impact.
Disability Areas
Vision
Topic Areas
Assistive Technology, Uncategorized, Web/Media/App Access
Speaker Bio(s)
Deneb Pulsipher
“Captain Accessible” Deneb (DEH-neb) gets excited about the inherent ability the web provides to let everyone access the same information, whether they’re able to see or not, hear or not, use a mouse or not, have no cognitive challenges, or do. The internet can be accessed by nearly everyone through regular technologies like web browsers or assistive technologies like screen readers, as long as we code it right. Deneb’s passion is making sure it’s coded right, which means thoroughly reviewing all of our own sites before we release them into the wild, and also sporadically emailing owners of the sites he happens on while surfing that could use some accessibility improvements.
Akosua (Kosi) Asabere
Akosua (Kosi) Asabere is a Digital Accessibility Engineer and the Head of Accessibility at Desert Wing Design LLC, with over a decade of experience helping organizations build more inclusive, usable, and accessible digital spaces. A former Accessibility Specialist at the W3C, Kosi brings a rare blend of technical expertise, leadership, and lived experience as a native screen reader user to everything she does.
She has led accessibility initiatives across higher education, government, nonprofits, and startups—improving web and mobile experiences, shaping organization-wide policies, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure digital tools work for everyone. Her past roles include serving as Accessibility Manager at Lighthouse for the Blind Inc. and IT Accessibility Specialist at the University of Maryland, where she drove meaningful change by integrating accessibility into technology development and procurement processes.
Kosi’s background as an Assistive Technology Trainer further grounds her approach in empathy and practicality. She has trained hundreds of users of all levels on tools like JAWS, NVDA, and ZoomText, while supporting teams in building products and services that reflect the real-world experiences of people with disabilities. Her work is driven by a deep belief that accessibility should be usable, equitable, and human-centered.