It very much depends on the task in question. The big difference is that screenreader users have to constantly make a lot of assumptions about what's happening anywhere on the screen they're not currently "looking" at. A screenreader can narrate one thing at a time, focus on one thing at a time, and anything else has to be explicitly navigated to. How fast this goes, and to what degree this is even necessary, depends on the medium, the tasks and even the individual user.

Can a screenreader user read faster than a sighted user? Given how fast some people have their speech rates set to, that wouldn't surprise me. Can a screenreader PROOFread faster than a sighted person? No, probably not, as a sighted user can instantly see all the squiggles and zip through them with the mouse, making a decision on how to handle the perceived spelling error.

Can a screenreader proofread more accurately than a sighted person? In some cases maybe, given auditory and braille reading is by character and not by word, making , say, a spelling error like tihs one easier to catch.

In a lot of cases where a screenreader user might be faster it will, as is mentioned above, be because of keyboard shortcuts, which screenreader users often depend on to get things done in a somewhat efficient way. Sighted users COULD learn these but often don't, which at times makes them slower. E.g. I can copy-paste files from one place to another pretty quickly with the keyboard, but a sighted person can probably select non-contiguous files faster given filetypes have icons.

So ...yes, there is some truth to it, particularly because a particular breed of screenreader users will always try to figure out ways to be faster/more efficient with the tools they have access to, but to what degree really depends on a thousand different tiny factors.

Depends on what kind of sighted user you're talking about. Proficient sighted users should perform better than proficient screen-reader users since they get to choose the device that best fits every situation whereas we have to stick with the keyboard no matter what. If, however, you are comparing proficient screen-reader users to average sighted users then that's not a fair comparison.

Personally I perform much worse as a screen-reader user than I did as a sighted user, and that's after 7 years of screen-reader use.

No. Things just aren’t that accessible to screenreaders. And by that I mean the web and websites and apps. So i would say using a screenreader is a great tool, but the internet isn’t there yet. You might be thinking of braille which can be read faster than a sighted reader using the various codes.

Good grief no.

OK you could probably come up with some tortured example of how things are faster with a reader, but in general no, no way, not in a million million years. I have used computers with and without sight and absolutely the worst thing about it is how slow it is. If you're just typing on an email or document or something it's fine but not being able to skim read stuff or find things quickly is just killer.

If you haven't ever done it with good eyesight really, there is no comparison. Being blind slows you down in lots of ways and this is one of them. The thing I resent about it most is the time it takes.

Doubt it. Maybe in some things we are faster, but dealing with many accessibility problems that needs us to do some weird gymnastics to get pass them slows us down significantly.

Sounds like a context-specific thing, but it’s a very interesting observation.

As someone who had worked on user interfaces and given presentations about windowing interfaces, command line interfaces, zooming interfaces, and so on, my gut feel is that if the screen reader user doesn’t have mobility limitations, and is very familiar with shortcuts, then yes, a proficient screen reader will perform navigational tasks faster than sighted users who are targeting items visually with a mouse.

That aside, navigating, using menu items for file operations, etc., will oftentimes take up a small fraction of the time spent on the PC. However, fast and efficient navigation is a good thing: the less time one spends on navigation the better.

Not always depends on user, experience with screen reader, how application or website is accessible if even (it may not be at all), depends on task too, hands size (if you have smaller hands doing some key combos isn't easy bigger hands are advantage), speech speed, depends on system and device.

I mostly compared Windows PCs JAWS vs Zoomtext Magnifier or Magnifier/Reader, Supernova Access Suite. It was rehabilitation course for low vision and blind we had to learn all programs legally blind learned Braille and Braille readers too.

- I know some thinks in Excel are literally 2-3 mouse clicks and it's done with key combo it was like 5 key combinations and 3 menus to open i was slower than my classmate who used Zoomtext Magnifier with mouse. Some tasks were completely inaccessible to do with keyboard. Keystrokes were great for text editing much faster and less errors (making font bold or thin just with right combo without opening font properties window, precise text selection much faster: word, sentence, paragraphs, excel)

- Finding information on web: depends on magnification but mostly sighted ones are faster ones. There are lots of elements that i have to filter out, skip, headlines aren't labeled or even paragraphs, lots of ads and floating popups obscuring the focus cursor of screenreaders using internet explorer... I can manage those problems with add-ons on my personal devices but if I'm at work or school when installing anything no default is forbidden i have to deal with it. Some websites were completely inaccessible to screenreaders even on iPhones so mouse users had to do some tasks.

- homework mouse users, (printing, shutting down PC, closing opening apps, navigation in menus, creating new folder) keyboard users
Actually typing text keyboard users are faster because we're so much used to layout we have the muscular memory we don't have to look with eyes to type, to type with two fingers, to switch dominant hand between keyboard and mouse losing contact.

It takes so much more time to learn and memorize, often keystrokes are changing with updates.

yes, but it depends on the operating system.