You can’t reliably detect screen readers

When I hold workshops on accessibility I am often asked how to detect screen readers. The answer is that you can’t, at least not in a reliable way.

The main reason is that screen readers run alongside (or on top of, if you prefer) regular web browsers and do not have a user agent string of their own that you can sniff.

While it is possible to use Flash to detect whether some assistive technology is active, it is quite unreliable:

Steve Faulkner talks more about this in Developer Beware: Using Flash to Detect Screen Readers.

Posted on September 6, 2010 in Quick Tips, Accessibility