How To Support Screen Reader Users

Overview

Our vision is to make Glean accessible to as many people as possible. Glean is regularly tested with screen readers to ensure compatibility.

Our aim is to ensure screen reader users have a comparable experience of Glean to visual users. This is an ongoing process, and occasionally some issues slip past us in testing.

We test using NVDA on Windows and Apple VoiceOver on Mac. But you can also use JAWS and Windows own inbuilt tools. Almost any screenreader should work with Glean, although there may be some anomalies as different screenreaders interpret pages slightly differently.

If you want to try these out then:

NVDA is free from: https://www.nvaccess.org/download/
JAWS is a paid for app but has a free trial period built in from: https://support.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/JAWS
Apple's inbuilt Voice Over for Mac: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/voiceover/welcome/mac
Window's own Narrator tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/chapter-1-introducing-narrator-7fe8fd72-541f-4536-7658-bfc37ddaf9c6

Info - The Glean Mobile app is also compatible with the inbuilt screenreader on both iOS and Android Devices.

About third party links

Please note that links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications are provided for your convenience only.

Glean has no control over the content or availability of these sites. The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorsement of third party tools by Glean.

Please advise us if you find any third party links to be broken or otherwise inappropriate.

Should you require support with using any third party tools, please contact the third party's own Support team, your institution's IT helpdesk, or your Glean account administrator for assistance.

The Basics

ScreenReader users will usually need to navigate through an app or webpage using their keyboard, eg pressing TAB to cycle through the various text and buttons ( SHIFT+TAB cycles backwards). Whenever they move to a piece of text or a button, then it is announced by the screenreader and you can press ENTER to select.

Tip - Try turning off your monitor and see if you can use your keyboard and screenreader to navigate.

Info - Glean has been optimised for keyboard navigation and the user will find areas that they can quickly skip past to allow them to more quickly access their document and skip over parts of the interface that they don't need to access.

Try it out

Open Glean
Press Tab 4 times to move to the Help Menu and press ENTER to select
Press the down arrow 4 times, to navigate the menu and select the Demo Event by pressing ENTER
Press Tab to start moving through the interface - the first option is to skip the header - Press Enter to skip
Press Tab 3 more times to move to the Play button, press ENTER to select and start playing the Demo Event
Press Tab to move through the interface - as you get to your slides, there will be an option to skip that section, press ENTER to skip
Press Enter to skip the Annotation section
Your focus is now on the bottom right of Glean where you can start to add text notes and labels.

Please note that Glean has some inbuilt single character shortcuts, which might conflict with screen reader shortcuts. These can be disabled by opening the Account Menu, selecting Preferences and turning off the Keyboard Shortcuts option.

If you do notice any issues or have any suggestions for improvement then we would love to hear from you, we are always trying to improve Glean for everybody.

For other accessibility features please check out this article: https://help.glean.co/article/24-accessibility-and-glean