for our second fund a feature I visited
LC industries a company located in
Durham to talk with bond LC industry
serves an important role in the
community
I'll let Vaughn explain so the mission
is
to create meaningful employment for
people who are blind or visually
impaired and I think that's just just
it's great because I mean I know it's
really hard getting a job as a blind
person and I'm talking with other blind
people before and even they agree so
it's not just my experience it's also
what other people say and so you know
being here and having this ability to
create jobs potential jobs for people
who might be interested like we're doing
technology services and technology is
big field right now it's really trendy
and a lot of kids growing up they're
going to be into this whole technology
thing so creating jobs for them so that
they have the option to to come here as
a person who is blind Vaughn uses a
screen reader in Adele see industries
she wears a few different hats my
official title I guess is
the digital accessibility analyst it's a
mouthful but um but that's essentially
like I do digital accessibility testing
I'm kind of doing it and I'm in charge
of executing and doing the reporting
compiling all of that together so so
that's what I'm doing but I don't I'm
also helping out with building this
department so you know that we are just
starting out it started about a year ago
I believe and nobody see since I got
here I got here in April and I've been
helping out with some of the business
development piece I've been helping out
with some of the training so so you know
my my position is one thing but I've
been doing quite a lot of different
things as well Vaughn agreed to meet
with me to talk about what it's like to
use the internet with a screen reader we
began by talking about what a screen
reader does and how it works so I use a
screen reader actually two screen
readers jaws and NVDA so I use both of
them okay um not not together but when
Jobs failed
I'll go to
or vice-versa sure for those in the
course who may not be familiar with
screen readers can you describe what it
does or how it works yeah so essentially
a screen reader is what it's not like it
it's the software that will read the
screen to you except it can only read
textual information so how do you get
jaws to work how do you operate it so
it's primarily operated with the
keyboard so you can't use your mouth but
you can there are some just for some
some ways you can incorporate the mouse
into it but that's tricky so primarily
it's the keyboard when Vaughn says that
she primarily uses the keyboard that
makes a lot of sense someone unable to
see a computer screen would have little
use for pointing and clicking with a
mouse so instead in order to navigate
websites and documents keyboard commands
or keyboard shortcuts are used to tell
the screen reader where to focus I was
curious about how Vaughn used her screen
reader to find her way around a website
let's see though when you're on the
internet with whether you're on like the
Chrome or Firefox that are a set of
keystrokes that you can use to get
around and it can be as easy as the
letter H you just press H and it'll move
you from heading to heading if you press
L it'll move you from one list to
another and then if you press shift with
one of those letters it will move you
back so let's say if you press shift H
it'll move you to the previous heading
and usually there are a lot of
keystrokes but your primary go-to will
probably probably be the headings
because it's primarily used for
structuring content on a web page I was
glad Vaughn mentioned structure in
module 2 you'll learn about how to
structure content so that it can be more
easily navigated by screen reader users
as well as other students in your class
but I was curious about what it was like
for Vaughn when she comes across content
that hasn't been structured excessively
um yeah so most documents I've come
across they're usually not tagged with
headings or anything like that they're
just they're usually just straight out
the text so I just use the arrow keys
for that okay or you can move from page
to page and there's a she commits
command for that as well do you find
that you have a preference when were the
other if there's headings present versus
no headings present I like the headings
honestly and you can definitely
structure your Word documents do you
have headings as well with the screen
reader you you move it's a it's a linear
process right it's not like you can scan
across the page so it's kind of like
moving down it was interesting that
Vaughn called the experience linear
essentially when a new web page loads or
when Vaughn access as a document the
screen reader automatically starts at
the top of the page this is where the
keyboard shortcuts come in handy Vaughn
could listen to the whole page from the
top to bottom but that ends up being
very time-consuming so it's very helpful
essential even the digital content be
structured so that a screen reader user
can skim the page primarily
semantics though things like headings
make sure to put those in there
especially if you have a larger webpage
I appreciated Vaughn sharing why
structuring digital content is so
important a valuable takeaway from my
talk with her is acknowledging that when
content is structured it becomes more
navigable for everyone we'll continue
our conversation with bond in the next
module