Demonstration: Screen Reader Support for a Complex Interactive Science Simulation

Abstract

Interactive simulations are increasingly important in science education, yet most are inaccessible to blind learners. We demonstrate an accessible version of a simulation, Balloons and Static Electricity, that illustrates responses to key challenges in providing screen reader support: the need to describe unpredictable sequences of events, the manipulation of objects that act as both controls and displays, and the management of descriptions of changes in the state of the simulation as well as of the state of the interactive object, itself. Meeting these challenges requires extending current practices for verbal description of visual interactive content.