Discord PC Client Guide for Blind and Visually Impaired Users



Discord PC Client Guide for Blind and Visually Impaired UsersIntroductionHey, welcome to Discord! This PC client recently got an accessibility facelift and it’s working quite well. The application can appear confusing and frustrating because there’s no quick start guide for users who can’t see the screen very well or at all and that, in turn, can make the application appear to be inaccessible: so we’re providing this guide to solve that.Getting Started and TerminologySo, you have discord installed and you’re ready to jump in. When you first launch Discord, you are greeted with the Discord Updater screen. This happens each and every time you open Discord even if there are no updates, so expect it to be there all the time.Next, you’ll find yourself on the home screen. Here you’ll find information on which of your friends is online and what they might be doing. Typically this will list something like “Playing World of Warcraft” or “Playing D&D.” You’ll also find update information from discord here.You won’t spend much time here, so let’s move on to the bread and butter of Discord: ServersA server is an encapsulated community on Discord. In a server you will find resources, media, and communication between members of the community that the server is dedicated to. You can think of a server as a home on a neighborhood street. Inside the home are rooms where people can meet and interact. These ‘rooms’ are called Channels on Discord.There are 2 types of channels on Discord:Text channels where people can type and send messages instantly.Voice channels where people can converse as if speaking on the phone or over Skype.A server may have multiples of each channel type. You can join a voice channel and a text channel at the same time to get the best of both worlds.As you become more familiar with Discord, you may choose to join several servers to interact with several communities. Most servers will appear the same, so this guide should be useful to get started regardless of what servers you join.Let’s jump into a server and take a look.AppearanceThis section assumes you have joined at least one server.If you want to join a server to follow along, visit the Knights of The Braille website to find a link to join our server.Let’s start with the appearance of Discord. The application flows slightly differently for non-visual users, so that will be described in detail in the context of a keyboard user here.From the home screen on discord, start at the top of the page. This is the top left of the screen for visual users. A vertical column appears on the left side of the screen with the names of the servers you are a part of displayed. You can arrow down with a screen reader until you hear the name of the server and press enter. Mouse users need only to click on the server icon.The screen will change, though this change is not always communicated to screen reader users.You are now presented with 4 vertical columns in the application. The far left column is the list of servers from before. The next column to the right contains a list of text channels followed by a list of voice channels. You may also notice server member names in this list: particularly after encountering voice channels. This is because Discord lists which users are active inside of a voice chat.Continuing the tour: in the bottom left of the screen is a box containing your user name and user settings which will include switch buttons for ‘mute’, ‘deafen’, and ‘user settings’ among others. The next column to the right of the channels column is the main window. Here you will find the active text chat as well as an edit box to write your own messages into the chat. This is the largest section of the window.Finally, the fourth column is the members column. Here you will find a list of online and offline members of the server.If you are using a screen reader and are arrowing down, you will encounter the regions of the application in that order:Server list, text channels list, voice channels list, user settings, main chat window, text chat edit box, and members list.NOTE: Screen reader users can use the virtual find function to quickly find controls. For example, if you’re looking for the mute button, you can activate the find function of your screen reader, type ‘mute’, and then press enter and you will have found the mute button.ChannelsEntering channels is easy. You simply navigate to them with your screen reader and press enter or else click on the server name. If there are a lot of channels in the server, you might not see all of the available channels while down arrowing. This is because the columns for channels and members requires a mouse scroll to expose the additional elements. You can use your screen reader’s mouse routing functions:JAWS: Insert + Numpad MinusNVDA: Insert + NumPad SlashThis will place your mouse cursor in the column that needs to scroll. From here, you may need to use a track pad or a mouse wheel to scroll down.For many laptops, you can place 2 fingers on the trackpad and move them upward to scroll.Another option you have is to collapse the text channels to see available voice channels. To do so, just find the text channels button and press enter. This will allow all text channels to disappear aside from the general channel. Arrow down to view the voice channels. You can expand text channels again by pressing enter on the text channels button again.you have a few more options to navigate.Quick SwitcherFirst, you can use the quick switcher to quickly navigate to a channel. You need to navigate through the channels list at least once to note the name of the channels you’d like to quickly jump to. After you have the channel names noted, you can use the quick switcher to type in the channel name and quickly navigate there.Press Control + K to open the quick switcher.Next, type the correct prefix for the type of channel location you’d like to navigate to.Text channels will always begin with the hashtag symbol. #Voice channels will always begin with an exclamation point !As an example, In the Knights of The Braille server we have a general text chat available as well as a general voice channel.To navigate to the general text channel, I would need to type #general and then press enter.To navigate to the general voice channel, I would need to type !general and press enter.Note the symbols before the word “General” above.You can also use the quick switcher to navigate to different servers. In that case, you would use the asterisk symbol before the name of the server.Example: *Knights of The BrailleYou can also use the quick switcher to quickly direct message a user. To do so, you only need to use the ‘At symbol’ @ and then type the user’s name.Example: @usernameKeyboard ShortcutsYou can use the following keyboard shortcuts to move between channels on a server. You can find more keyboard shortcuts like this in the Keyboard Shortcuts section later in this guide.Screen Reader Note: You will need to either bypass your screen reader before pressing the following keys, or enter into a text field in order for these commands to work properly and consistently. This is because your screen reader will attempt to intercept the key presses before they reach discord.With JAWS, press Insert + 3 on the number row to bypass JAWS,With NVDA press Insert + F2 to bypass NVDA.Move between channels – Alt + Arrow key up or Alt + arrow key down.Move between unread text channels—Alt + Shift + arrow key up or Alt + Shift + arrow key down.Move between unread text channels with mentions – Control + Alt + Shift + arrow key up or Control + Alt + Shift arrow key down.When you’ve decided you’d like to leave a voice channel, you must disconnect using the disconnect button.You can find this button in the user settings box. If you’re using a screen reader, you can also just use the find command, type in disconnect, and press enter. You should land right on the button to disconnect.ConclusionWe hope that this guide has been useful in getting you started with discord. If you have any additional information that should be added to our humble guide, please submit it using the contact form on the knights of the braille website so that we can make a definitively helpful guide for blind and visually impaired user.Appendix: Keyboard ShortcutsThese shortcuts have been tested using JAWS and NVDA.Navigate Between Servers Control ALT Arrow Key UP & Control ALT Arrow Key DOWN Navigate Between Channels ALT Arrow Key UP & ALT Arrow Key DOWNNavigate Between Unread Channels ALT Shift Arrow Key UP & ALT Shift Arrow Key DOWN Navigate Between Unread Channels with Mentions Control Shift ALT Arrow Key UP & Control Shift ALT Arrow Key DOWNMark Channel as Read EscapeMark Server Read Shift EscapeMute Control + Shift + MDeafen Control + Shift + D ................
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