How Screen Readers See Your Design
Screen readers don’t see your beautiful layout — they navigate a document’s semantic structure. Headings become navigation landmarks. Images without alt text are invisible. Custom components without ARIA labels are mysterious black boxes. Understanding this fundamentally changes how you approach design.
Semantic Structure is Design
Your heading hierarchy (H1 through H6) creates a table of contents that screen reader users navigate by. A proper heading structure isn’t just about SEO — it’s the primary navigation mechanism for blind users. AI tools can now analyze your designs and flag heading hierarchy issues before a single line of code is written.
Writing Effective Alt Text
AI can generate alt text automatically, but it often misses context. A photo on a real estate site needs different alt text than the same photo on an architecture blog. Learn when to use descriptive alt text, when to use empty alt (decorative images), and when AI-generated alt text needs human editing.
Hands-On Exercise
Turn on VoiceOver (Mac) or NVDA (Windows) and spend 15 minutes navigating a website you designed. Don’t look at the screen — just listen. Note every moment of confusion, frustration, or missing information. This experience will transform how you think about design.
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