Information Wayfinding of Screen Reader Users: Five Personas to Expand Conceptualizations of User Experiences
J. Bern Jordan, Victoria Van Hyning, Mason A. Jones, Rachael Bradley Montgomery, Elizabeth Bottner, Evan Tansil · 2024 · ASSETS '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3663548.3688539
Summary
This paper presents five user personas representing the diverse range of screen reader experiences, developed from observations across several studies with blind screen reader users. The authors challenge the common assumption in research and development that screen reader users form a homogeneous group with similar skills and strategies. In reality, users vary dramatically in their technical proficiency, navigation approaches, troubleshooting capabilities, preferred output modalities (speech vs. braille), and mental models of how web content is structured. The five personas span a spectrum: Adah, a highly proficient power user who uses keyboard shortcuts, heading navigation, and braille display efficiently; Beatriz, a competent user who relies primarily on the tab key and links list rather than advanced navigation commands; Charles, a moderately skilled user who tends to read linearly and struggles with complex page structures; Deshawn, a newer user who learned screen readers later in life after vision loss and relies heavily on basic commands; and Etta, an older user with minimal technical confidence who frequently becomes disoriented and requires sighted assistance to recover. Each persona includes details about their background, onset of vision loss, screen reader training, preferred tools and settings, navigation strategies, troubleshooting approaches, and emotional responses to accessibility barriers. The personas were synthesised from qualitative data across multiple user studies conducted by the research team, drawing on patterns observed in real participants while being fictional composites.
Key findings
The personas reveal that screen reader proficiency exists on a wide spectrum driven by factors including age of vision loss onset, formal training received, years of experience, cognitive style, and comfort with technology. Power users like Adah employ dozens of keyboard shortcuts and navigate by headings, landmarks, and ARIA roles, efficiently building mental maps of page structure. In contrast, users like Etta navigate almost exclusively by tabbing through links and reading linearly, missing content that is not in the tab order. The "information wayfinding" concept — drawn from physical wayfinding research — proves apt: just as pedestrians navigate physical spaces using landmarks, paths, and spatial reasoning, screen reader users navigate information spaces using headings, link lists, search functions, and structural cues. When these cues are absent or inconsistent, users become "lost" in the page just as a pedestrian might become lost in an unfamiliar building. A key finding is that many users never learn advanced navigation features — not because they lack ability, but because training is inconsistent, expensive, or unavailable. The personas also highlight that troubleshooting when something goes wrong (an unlabelled button, a focus trap, a dynamic update that is not announced) varies enormously — proficient users diagnose the problem and work around it, while less experienced users may assume they are at fault rather than the website. The emotional dimension is significant: repeated accessibility failures erode confidence and can cause users to abandon tasks or avoid websites entirely.
Relevance
These personas are a practical tool for web developers, designers, and accessibility testers who need to move beyond the assumption of a "typical" screen reader user. Most accessibility testing — both automated and manual — implicitly assumes a proficient user who will navigate by headings, use landmark regions, and understand ARIA roles. The personas make visible that a large portion of actual screen reader users navigate differently and may never encounter content that is not in the tab order or not read aloud in linear sequence. For WCAG implementation, this has direct implications: meeting success criteria technically is necessary but insufficient if the resulting experience only works for expert users. The information wayfinding metaphor offers accessibility practitioners a useful conceptual framework — designing web pages should be like designing a well-signed building, with clear landmarks, consistent structure, and multiple ways to find your destination. The training gap documented across the personas also highlights a systemic accessibility issue: the complexity of screen readers combined with inadequate training infrastructure means many blind users never reach their potential level of digital access.
Tags: screen readers · blind users · personas · user experience · information wayfinding · braille · assistive technology · web accessibility · digital literacy
Standards referenced: WCAG