TikTok Accessibility

English description. Magyar leírás itt olvasható.

A browser extension that makes tiktok.com usable with screen readers (optimized for NVDA). It is not a separate app: it runs on the normal TikTok website, with your own account, after you sign in. Announcements follow your browser's language: Hungarian in a Hungarian browser, English otherwise.

Features

• Keyboard audio control – TikTok's mute/volume control is mouse-only and unlabeled; the extension controls the video element directly and re-applies your chosen volume on every new video. (This also fixes the common "no sound" problem: TikTok starts muted by default and remembers it.)
• Video navigation – next/previous video with a single key.
• Automatic announcements – when you scroll, NVDA reads the new video's author and description.
• Interactions – like, open/close comments from the keyboard.
• Labeling – unlabeled icon buttons (like, comment, share…) get proper aria-labels.
• LIVE streams – open a live stream with one key on its own page, where the chat is available (the feed only plays a preview, without chat).
• Playback speed – speed up / slow down from the keyboard; the setting carries over to every video.
• Settings (volume, mute, speed, auto-announce) persist across browser restarts.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every command is a single key when NVDA is in focus mode (toggle: NVDA+Space). From browse mode, the same keys work with Alt+Shift (e.g. Alt+Shift+M).

Key	Function
M	Mute / unmute
, (comma)	Volume down 10%
. (period)	Volume up 10% (also unmutes)
K	Play / pause
N	Next video
P	Previous video
L	Like / remove like
F	Add to / remove from favorites
B	Move focus to the follow button; press Enter there to follow / unfollow the author
S	Copy the video link to the clipboard
G	Speed up playback (in steps of 0.25, up to 2×)
D	Slow down playback (down to 0.25×)
R	Back to normal playback speed. Hold it down: 2× speed while held, back to normal on release
1	Go to the For You feed
2	Go to the Following feed
3	Go to LIVE
O	Open the current live stream on its own page (where the chat and the message box are)
C	Open / close comments (while open, reading stays inside the panel, like in a dialog)
I	Detailed info about the current video (author, description, music, counts, state)
A	Toggle automatic video announcements
H	Help (reads the key list)

Note: if you have multiple keyboard layouts installed in Windows, Alt+Shift switches layouts by default. In that case either use focus mode with the single-key commands, or disable the layout-switching hotkey (Settings → Time & Language → Typing → Advanced keyboard settings → Input language hot keys).

Download and install

The extension is not in a web store yet; download it from GitHub and load it as an "unpacked" extension. It takes about 2 minutes and is fully doable with a screen reader — every step below names the exact buttons and links so you can find them with NVDA.

Step 1: download from GitHub

1. On this page (the project's GitHub front page), find the button named "Code" (with NVDA: press B to jump between buttons, or search for the word "Code").
2. In the dropdown, choose the "Download ZIP" link. Your browser downloads a ZIP file (named something like tiktok-accessibility-main.zip).
3. Open your Downloads folder, select the ZIP file and extract it: context menu (Applications key or Shift+F10) → "Extract All…" → Extract.
4. Important: put the extracted folder somewhere you won't delete it (e.g. Documents), because the browser runs the extension from that folder. If you delete or move the folder, the extension disappears.

Step 2 for Chrome or Edge

1. Type chrome://extensions in the address bar (edge://extensions in Edge) and press Enter.
2. Find the "Developer mode" toggle (with NVDA: search for "Developer") and turn it on (Space).
3. New buttons appear. Choose "Load unpacked".
4. In the folder picker, browse to the extracted folder. Select the folder that directly contains manifest.json (extraction sometimes creates a folder inside a folder with the same name — pick the inner one).
5. Done. Open (or refresh with F5) tiktok.com — the extension announces itself: "TikTok accessibility helper active".
6. Note: Chrome may warn about developer-mode extensions on every start ("Disable developer mode extensions") — choose "Cancel", otherwise it turns the extension off.

Step 2 for Firefox

1. Type about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox in the address bar and press Enter.
2. Choose the "Load Temporary Add-on…" button.
3. In the file picker, select manifest.json from the extracted folder.
4. Important limitation: Firefox removes temporarily loaded add-ons when the browser closes, so you must reload it after every restart. If you use Firefox regularly, let the author know — permanent installation is possible with Mozilla's free signing.

Updating to a newer version

1. Download the ZIP again (Step 1) and extract it to the same place, overwriting the old files.
2. Chrome/Edge: on the chrome://extensions page, press the "Reload" button on the extension's card, or simply restart the browser.
3. Refresh the TikTok tab (F5).

Quick start with NVDA

1. Open tiktok.com and sign in.
2. Press NVDA+Space for focus mode — single-key commands work from here.
3. No sound? Press M (unmute), then . (period) to raise the volume.
4. Use N/P to move between videos; NVDA automatically reads each new video's author and description.
5. To read content (e.g. comments), switch back to browse mode (NVDA+Space) — the Alt+Shift commands still work there.

Known limitations

• TikTok changes its page structure often; a feature (e.g. reading the author, or finding the like button) may break. This is fixable by updating the SEL selector list at the top of content.js — please report anything that stops speaking.
• Writing comments uses TikTok's own input field; it is at the end of the open comment panel (Tab or arrow down to reach it).
• The extension only helps on the website, not in TikTok's desktop (Microsoft Store) app.