Read Graphics with a Screen Reader? Say What?

There are many times where a screen reader user will just choose to ignore graphics. It’s great when a graphic includes the correct descriptive alternative text that tells the screen reader what the graphic contains. The screen reader speaks or displays in braille this descriptive text so that the person reading that web page, document, email, etc. can have a good idea about what’s in that graphic.

Beyond alt text

What if you wanted more than just a label tacked on to a graphic? Let’s talk about why you would want this.

Say you had a screenshot on a webpage that had information that you wanted to read. Perhaps the alt text simply said: “Windows Dialog.” What if the window in question said this:

“Are you sure you want to permanently delete this file?”

That line of text would significantly increase your understanding of what you were reading! Now let’s learn how you can unveil graphics yourself with all three major screen readers.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

This is a technique that takes a graphic and tries to decipher the textual information within it. This process isn’t 100 percent accurate due to various factors such as quality of the graphic, type of OCR engine being used to extract the text, and so on. Results can vary, but even imperfect results often give you useful information you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

OCR with NVDA

Navigate to the graphic you want to read.

Press NVDA+R. This will tell NVDA to perform OCR on that graphic.

NVDA uses Windows built-in OCR, so there’s nothing extra to install.

OCR with JAWS

Navigate to the graphic you want to read.

Press JAWS KEY+SPACE, followed by the letters O, then C. This will tell JAWS to perform OCR on that control.

Sometimes JAWS will think the control is the entire page and not the graphic, so you may need to move off of the graphic, then back on to it, and perform those keystrokes again.

OCR with Narrator

Narrator doesn’t perform OCR on individual graphics in the same way, but it does offer AI-powered image descriptions. More on that below.

AI-powered image descriptions

Beyond OCR, screen readers can now attempt to describe a graphic using AI. This goes further than reading text out of an image. It tells you what the image actually shows.

JAWS Picture Smart

Press JAWS KEY+SPACE, followed by the letters P, then C. This will tell JAWS to try and fetch a description of the picture.

Narrator image descriptions

Press CONTROL+NARRATOR KEY+D. Narrator will use Microsoft’s AI services to describe the image. This feature has gotten significantly better and provides natural-language descriptions of photos, charts, and other visuals.

NVDA image descriptions

NVDA has add-ons available in the NVDA Add-on Store that can perform image descriptions. Setup varies by add-on, but the capability is there.

JAWS and graphical PDF files

JAWS has one other really handy feature when it comes to dealing with PDF files that are comprised of an image. If you open the file in Adobe Reader, you will be asked if you want to have JAWS OCR the PDF for you. All you need to do is to hit the Yes button, and JAWS will process the PDF file for you. The resulting PDF will be in a virtual window so you can read it as if it were a webpage. You can also copy the text and paste it somewhere else if you’d like.

JAWS OCR commands reference

Because JAWS has extra features when it comes to OCR, image descriptions, and PDF files, I’m listing the keyboard commands from JAWS help below for you. To use any of the following commands, you must first press JAWS KEY+SPACE, then the letter O for OCR.

A, acquire and OCR a print document from a scanner or Freedom Scientific camera such as PEARL.

D, OCR a scanned PDF document opened in Acrobat Reader.

F, from Windows Explorer, OCR any image file.

C, OCR a control on screen.

W, OCR the current window.

S, OCR the entire screen.

Q, quit or cancel an OCR job.

JAWS Picture Smart commands reference

To use any of the following commands, press JAWS KEY+SPACE followed by the letter P.

A, describe an image from a scanner or Freedom Scientific camera such as PEARL.

F, from Windows Explorer, describe any image file.

C, describe a control on screen.

B, describe an image on the clipboard.

FAQ

Which screen reader is best for reading graphics?

JAWS currently has the most built-in OCR and image description features, including PDF OCR and Picture Smart. NVDA’s OCR is solid and uses the Windows OCR engine with no extra install needed. Narrator’s AI-powered image descriptions have improved significantly and are worth trying.

Does OCR work on every graphic?

No. Results depend on the quality of the image, the text size, and how the image was created. Screenshots of text tend to work well. Photos of text at odd angles or low resolution may produce partial results.

Do I need an internet connection for image descriptions?

JAWS Picture Smart and Narrator image descriptions use online AI services, so yes for those. NVDA’s OCR and JAWS’s OCR work locally without an internet connection.

Can I OCR an entire PDF that’s just scanned pages?

Yes. JAWS can OCR graphical PDFs when you open them in Adobe Reader. JAWS will ask if you want to OCR the document, and the result appears in a readable virtual window.

Grab those graphics

Now at least you’ll have something to do with graphics other than ignore them. Unless you want to ignore them, that’s. If you need that extra bit of information, now you’ll have some extra tools to add to your belt.

Happy exploring!

Qapla!