Making A Screenreader Accessible Audio Program
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Annabelle Baradine
0
Reputation points
I'm a sight challenged woman who is a beginner at computer programming, and I'd like to find out, what is the best way to create an audio program that's accessible to screenreaders like JAWS? Specifically, I'd like to make checkboxes that when toggled, trigger any audio file you choose. Each one is a channel, and you can put as many channels as you want in this program. Next to each checkbox will be an "Open..." button, where you have a standard File Open dialog box to choose which audio file you'd like to open. Next to that will be a volume slider, a rate of change slider, and a pan slider. Next to those sliders will be a "Reset" button for the channel. In the beginning of the panel will be a "Reset All" button for all channels. When there's no audio, the checkboxes will be labeled, "Not Set", then when you open an audio file, the name of that channel will change to whatever the file name is you chose to open. When the checkboxes are checked, the audio will play, and it's loopable, when the checkboxes are unchecked, it will stop the audio. Not pause, but stop and rewind to the beginning. I don't want to use Visual Basic, as that's not exactly screenreader accessible, but here's an example of what I mean by Audio channels with checkboxes.Custom Background Soundbank.png
Windows development | Windows API - Win32
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Obaid Farooqi MSFT 761 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator2025-07-25T07:59:23.3666667+00:00 The child tag Windows Open Specifications is dedicated to supporting issues related to open specifications. You can find open specifications here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/
Your inquiry is not related to open specifications. I have removed the Windows Open Specifications child tag from your post and have added Windows API tag where there is better chance of getting an answer.
Regards,
Obaid Farooqi - MSFT
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Castorix31 90,956 Reputation points2025-07-25T12:35:39.56+00:00 From IA, standard controls support Accessibility, otherwise you can also add Control.AccessibleDescription (WinForms) or AutomationProperties (XAML)
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Annabelle Baradine 0 Reputation points
2025-08-03T05:48:07.82+00:00 I wasn't sure whether to put Windows API or Windows Open Specifications as a tag, so that's how that happened. As for the controls like buttons and checkboxes, what's the difference between "WinForms" and "XAML"?
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Rob Caplan - MSFT 6,117 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator2025-08-05T17:38:17.8333333+00:00 Directly creating your UI with the Win32 API probably isn't what you want as a beginning programmer. I'm not sure why @Obaid Farooqi MSFT chose this tag. You've probably started learning with a higher-level language than C++.
Any UI framework will work with a screen reader by default. The standard controls all provide accessibility tags and can be named appropriately. So long as you aren't creating custom controls and you pay attention to your design, your app will work fine in JAWS. This isn't going to depend on your framework.
I assume your objection to Visual Basic is the visual designer. VB.Net itself isn't any more or less accessible than C#, and both work with UI frameworks that do not require a visual designer.
XAML is an XML markup language to layout controls that is used by WPF, WinUI, and MAUI. XAML can be edited in text mode. WinForms leans towards the visual designer. In any of these frameworks you can also lay out your controls purely in code.
Check out the Overview of framework options document for more detailed descriptions of the languages and frameworks provided for building Windows apps.
If you have questions about specific frameworks you can post under the tags for those frameworks. -
Annabelle Baradine 0 Reputation points
2025-08-06T00:17:12.8766667+00:00 What I object to is the fact that in Atmosphere Deluxe, the controls aren't able to easily be differentiated with screenreaders, specifically the volume, pan, and rate of change sliders, as they are always spoken as "Graphic" followed by a number such as "172". Instead of, say, "Volume Up/Down Slider: 50%", which for me is more specific. As I am sight challenged, I wonder what I would do to make an audio program that has accessible controls that won't be spoken in that manner and can be differentiated from each other. Another thing I object to is the idea that when I assign familiar window classes to unknown controls within JAWS, one of these controls is classified as "ThunderRT6UserControlDC", which I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a "Dialog Box", a "Button", a "Checkbox", a "Combobox", or even a "Radio Button".
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Rob Caplan - MSFT 6,117 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
2025-08-07T20:26:46.58+00:00 JAWS not reading Atmosphere Deluxe (AD) is an application issue. All current frameworks allow the developer to provide accessibility descriptors, with reasonable defaults.
If the developer uses custom controls or uses controls off label they will need to provide their own descriptors. The devs of AD deluxe didn't do this, and I'm not sure that Visual Basic 6 supported doing so readily - it released 27 years ago, around the same time that Windows released the Active Accessibility framework. VB6 went out of support 17 years ago (in 2008). The Windows accessibility stack has changed dramatically since then.
(We can tell that AD used VB6 because of the ThunderRT6UserControlDC - that is a VB6 control. A User Control is a container for a collection of other controls).
When writing your own app, any modern UI framework provides the tools you'll need to arrange and name the controls descriptively and in a way that makes sense to accessibility tools and users.
You can get an overview of UI Automation in the docs at:
(.Net : System.Windows.Automation) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/ui-automation/ui-automation-overview
(Native : Windows Automation API: UI Automation) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winauto/entry-uiauto-win32
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Annabelle Baradine 0 Reputation points
2025-08-11T17:54:57.55+00:00 The language I'm most familiar with is HTML, though that seems to lean more toward web pages rather than desktop apps. Which one of the frameworks you've mentioned is closest to HTML in how it's written?
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Rob Caplan - MSFT 6,117 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator
2025-08-12T16:11:10.7266667+00:00 For HTML desktop programming check out Blazor Desktop or React Native. There may be others, but that’s not an area I’m highly familiar with. Both should support HTML accessibility tags to be readable by JAWS.
WinForms and WPF use .Net and C# or VB. WinUI generally uses C# or C++. Straight Win32 is usually C++. There are projections into other languages, but by the time you get to JavaScript the direct Win32 calls are usually abstracted away.
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