Fangs – the screen reader emulator

This Mozilla Firefox extension creates a textual representation of a web page similar to how the page would be read by a modern screen reader. The extension and source can be downloaded from the SourceForge project page.

To install Fangs click here (you may have to allow this site to install extensions).

For more details, please read the Fangs FAQ.

If you feel that Fangs is useful, please consider donating a small amount to support development or tell other people about Fangs.

Make a donation to Fangs with PayPal.

Latest News

2010-01-10: Version 1.0.6 released

  • This version adds compatibility with Firefox 3.6 and updates will now be handled by the main Mozilla extension site. This means you have to manually uninstall the previous version but updating in the future will be much better. Please add a review at the extension site if you believe that Fangs has helped you.

2009-05-23: Version 1.0.5 released

  • This version adds compatibility with Firefox 3.5. Download from the link above if the automatic update doesn’t do it for you.

2008-06-23: Version 1.0.4 released

  • This version adds compatibility with Firefox 3.0. Mozilla now enforce a tougher security model for automatic extension updates. I have not had time to test this thoroughly. You may have to add the boolean preference setting extensions.checkUpdateSecurity with a value of false to be able to install the update.

2006-10-23: Version 1.0.3 released

  • This version adds compatibility with Firefox 2.0 (before it is released this time!)

2006-03-01: Version 1.0 released

  • Automatic updates activated. Install 0.9.9 and run update from the Firefox extension manager.

2006-02-20: Version 0.9.9 released

  • Support for Firefox 1.5 added.

2005-06-06: Version 0.9.3 released.

  • Minor bug fixes and first support for localization of the Fangs UI.
  • Now displays voice switch for elements where the lang attribute has been specified.
  • Apart from Firefox this version has been tested in Mozilla 1.7.7.

2005-05-30: Working on the 0.9 release. This will include a help page which hopefully will make it easier to understand how to use Fangs.

2005-02-12: Version 0.81 released.

  • Checkboxes and radiobuttons now display the title attribute value properly. Thanks to Jeanne Spellman for reporting it.
  • Bug where a form button was not announced fixed.
  • Heading announcements are new visually separated from other announcements. This makes it easier for developers to find where they are in the page.
  • Changed Fangs output font to sans-serif after complaints from several users. A later release will make it possible to specify this in the options dialog.

2005-01-10: Version 0.80 released.

  • Initial support for frames and iframes. Fangs will now render frame content. Frame title is rendered. Deeply nested frames work in Fangs but fail in Jaws. Unsure if it is possible to replicate this bug in Fangs.
  • List of links tab. The list of links tab is now working. Page links are displayed in the same way as in the link navigator window of a modern screen reader. The list of links is important when users scan the page.
  • List of headings tab. The list of headings tab is now working. Page headings and their level are now available. This is one of the ways a screen reader user scans a page to get an overview of what it is about.
  • The announcement texts now has proper padding to make it easier to copy Fangs output to e.g. an email.
  • Numbers were in some cases truncated as reported in bug 1099639. Fixed.

2005-01-06: Version 0.73 released. Download it from the SourceForge project page.

  • Added rendering of definition lists (the
    elements). This is useful as these elements are often used in the wrong way. Fangs will announce a definition list as “Definition list of X items. [dt value] equals [dd value]” just like a screen reader would.
  • Fixed link count in the “Page has N links” text. Only links with hrefs are counted. (Patch submitted by Simon Carney)
  • Fixed bug where textarea content was rendered twice. (Patch submitted by Simon Carney)

2004-12-13: I get emails saying that version 0.70 is not available at Mozilla Update yet. You can download it from the SourceForge Project page as well.
2004-12-08: I have finished version 0.70. This version adds a lot of new features and fixes some bugs:

  • Support for form elements. This closes bug 1071295.
  • Numbers are now translated properly. This means that “10,456.91” is rendered as “ten thousand four hundred and fifty-six point nine one”. This makes it easy to spot accessibility issues with numbers in your texts. This closes feature request 1071292.
  • Hidden elements stay hidden. A HTML element with a style of display:none will not be rendered by Fangs. This closes bug 1071299.
  • Fangs updates are now delivered through Mozilla Update. I am not entirely sure if this works yet, but it is a start. This takes care of feature request 1073069. Anyone who knows the inner workings of Mozilla Update and the install.rdf file are more than welcome to contact me.
  • Various bug fixes and some new test cases. Test cases and recordings can be found in the CVS repository.

For previous news about Fangs, please see blog entries in the Fangs category.