Many tips for making your blog more accessible focus on making the blog work for visitors who are using screen readers or specialized browsers that can read a web page to the visitor. Many people who are blind use screen readers, and so do some folks who have low vision, mobility problems, and even some kinds of learning disabilities that affect their reading.
If you're curious about how these things work, check out The Visually Impaired Web User's Technology by the American Foundation for the Blind. It's a good, quick summary of what screen readers are and what they do.
The profile of Jackie on Mark Pilgrim's classic Dive Into Accessibility illustrates how technology such as screen readers can be used in a person's life.
If you want to know what screen readers sound like, check out the recordings posted on Access Matters. They are the results of a test case, which is linked from the page, where blogger Bob Easton tested several different ways of labeling images. (Remember last week's tip about labeling images?)
For something with a little more content, you can listen to this sample recording on an accessibility site at the University of Florida. You can hear how links in the screen reader they're using are read in a different voice, so they stand out from the text.
The brave can try out the Screen Reader Simulation at WebAIM. It requires the Shockwave plugin, and it takes a few minutes to load, but it's pretty awe-inspiring for someone who hasn't used a screen reader to try completing the tasks they lay out for you to accomplish as the web page is read aloud.
Keep in mind when you're listening to recordings of screen readers, though, that they may be slowed down so non-users can keep up!
