Does SOS work with a screen reader?
Many screens are labelled for a screen reader on the web, and some parts are not reliable yet.
What we can and cannot promise
We have not gone through SOS screen by screen with a screen reader such as VoiceOver, TalkBack or NVDA. What follows comes from how the pages are built, and we can't promise that SOS works well on every screen.
This page is about SOS in a web browser.
Landmarks and headings
When a signed-in page loads, the first Tab stop is a link called Skip to main content. It shows only while it has focus, and Enter on it jumps to the main part of the page.
After you sign in, the content of each screen is marked as the main area. On a wide window the side menu is a navigation area. On a narrower window, such as a phone, the tab bar is a navigation area named Main tabs. A screen can hide that bar, and then there is no Main tabs area.
The start and sign-in page, sign-up, setup, the terms, the privacy policy and the Help Center each have one main area too. On the start, sign-in and sign-up screens, the box with the crisis phone numbers is a named area. You can jump straight to it.
On most screens the title at the top is marked as a top-level heading. Many screens also mark their section titles as smaller headings. A screen reader that can list headings can show them and jump between them.
Names and states
Nearly all buttons that show only an icon have a spoken name. A screen reader says what the button does instead of only button. We know this from scanning the code.
Every text box has a name in the code, such as Email, Password or Notes. A screen reader has more to read than the grey hint text inside the box.
Date and time pickers are buttons. They read as the field name and the chosen value, for example Start date: not set.
Photos have a description, such as Profile photo of a person's name or Progress photo from a date. A picture that only decorates, such as an article cover above its title, is skipped.
Many tabs, filter buttons, check boxes, radio buttons and switches tell a screen reader whether they are selected, pressed or checked. So do sections that open and close, which are read as open or closed.
Moving around and popups
When you move to a new screen after you have signed in, the page title changes. A short message such as Navigated to Wealth is announced.
The Get help now button has a spoken name.
In almost every popup, Tab stays inside it while it is open. Escape closes almost every popup. Your focus usually goes back to where you were.
What is not reliable yet
A few buttons that show only an icon may still have no spoken name. Our code scan finds none, but it cannot see every kind of button.
A name that exists is not always the most helpful one, so tell us when a button is hard to understand.
Some text box names are short, such as Notes, so they may not tell two boxes on one screen apart. Some date buttons say only Date.
Emoji are read with the name your screen reader gives them.
Most other chips, tabs and sections change how they look when you choose or open them. They do not tell a screen reader yet, so it may not say which one is chosen.
Some screens have no top-level heading yet, and some have more than one.
Popups and panels that do not work well
A few popups and panels do not close with Escape. The safety message in the mental health check-in is one. Use its Continue check-in button instead.
Some panels are drawn over the screen without holding your keyboard focus, such as the daily check-in score and the assessment-complete screen. The Add Notes panel in the news feed and the confirm box in a workout are others.
The Knowledge Graph
The Knowledge Graph picture is a drawing. Its points cannot be reached with Tab or opened from the keyboard.
The Explore tab and search list the concepts as text. A concept's own page, opened with Deep Dive, lists up to 20 of the concepts linked to it.
The panel on the graph screen shows only links it has already loaded, so it can be short or empty. The Browse tab shows only the first eight concepts in each category.
Tell us
If a screen does not work with your screen reader, tell us which screen, which screen reader and which device. We read every note.