How to Use Discord with a Screen Reader: A Quick Guide
freeCodeCamp.org · 软件开发
Discord is one of those technologies that came out of nowhere several years ago and is now everywhere. A huge variety of servers around all sorts of communities, efforts, and initiatives have been popping up and are still appearing. And they're largely taking the place of forums, chat rooms and, at times, documentation sites and news boards. To what degree this is a good thing is up for debate, but the long and short of it is that Discord is likely here to stay. When it comes to accessibility, Discord's had a bit of a rocky road. For years, it was very painful to use for screen reader users due to an apparent lack of forethought regarding accessibility. Over the last few years, this situation has improved substantially. While it's by no means fully accessible in 2026, it can be used relatively efficiently once you know the tricks of the trade. freeCodeCamp uses Discord, and the community has often seen that screen reader users struggle to use this communication tool comfortably. This is where this article comes in. In this article, I'll go over the basics you'll need to use Discord as a platform to send and receive messages and contribute to communities that use Discord as a communication platform. It's relatively easy to learn but can be difficult to fully grasp due to the various interwoven things it does. Still, these basics should get you up and running and will equip you to learn about all the other features it offers by yourself going forward. Table of Contents Screen Reader Prerequisites The Broad Strokes: How to Navigate Efficiently Speeding Things Up: How to Navigate and Interact Efficiently When is Browse Mode More Efficient? Conclusion Screen Reader Prerequisites Discord is an application that, because of the way it was built, has both web app and desktop app aspects to it. I think this is one of the main issues people run into, so I'll give a brief rundown about why this matters for screen reader users. Particularly on Windows, screen readers tend to ope