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Trouble using Wolfram notebooks with a screen reader on Windows

Posted 1 year ago

Hello,
I'm using screen reading software packages such as JAWS For Windows or NVDA. For that reason, I have to do everything via my PC keyboard, without using the mouse. This means that I can only read text, not graphics, and that graphics are only accessible to me if they have a meaningful "alt" tag attached to them.
Even though Wolfram Alpha's accessibility has improved over the past couple of years and I can use it to some extent, I think Wolfram notebooks must either be totally inaccessible for people who use a screen reader or I have no idea how I'm supposed to work with them when I can't use the mouse and when I can't read graphics.

I have set up a basic account on Wolfram Cloud.
I want to evaluate the entire contents of the file downloaded from a particular webpage (I can post the link later if someone's interested). It's a file with an ".m" extension.
This means that when I open a new notebook, I'm supposed to copy the contents of the whole file into my new notebook and then choose "Evaluate all cells".
I logged into my Wolfram Cloud account and I chose the button labeled "New computational notebook".
I thought I was supposed to reach an edit field where I would paste the contents of the "main.m" file. But I did not find any such thing on the webpage. And if it's something other than a conventional edit field of the kind that I would fill in on a web form, then I don't know where I'm supposed to paste the contents of the ".m" file.

I had a very long conversation with someone from the Wolfram support. The support person told me that they could only suggest me to read the Wolfram tutorial webpage called "Keyboard shortcut listing".
But on that webpage, I'm unable to find anything that would help me to reach the field I'm looking for. And if I'm supposed to paste the text into something other than an edit field, then I have no idea what that would be.

My question is simple:
Is there anyone here who might be able to describe to me what I should be trying to find, avoiding phrases like "click the red button" or "click the blue icon" or similar? Those won't help me. I'm currently absolutely stuck.

Thank you in advance.

  • Petr
POSTED BY: Petr Pařízek

Hi Petr,

I just saw your post. Do you work only in the Wolfram Cloud or do you also use the Wolfram Desktop version? Things like keyboard navigation work better in the desktop version.

I also recently made a function that can read out the output by using AI/LLM functionality:

https://resources.wolframcloud.com/FunctionRepository/resources/CaptionedEvaluate/

I don't know if this is useful to you, but I am curious if it is.

POSTED BY: Arnoud Buzing
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