This raises several issues. Firstly, screen readers are not all the same, so
you cannot test with one and assume the others will work just as well. Some
announce the presence of some semantic structure, some don't announce any at
all and some (I'm thinking primarily of Firevox) announce too much. The
handling of dynamic content (mostly scripts and Flash) varies massively, and
varies a great deal from version to version of the same product.
To some extent your choice will depend on the target market. JAWS has the
largest share of the business market by a very long way, so you need to
consider this if you are working on a B2B website. Business users are likely
to be more proficient too because it is the employer's interest to provide
training. By contrast, the free products are more prevalent amongst
consumers, and they often have lower proficiency because they don't get
trained.
But all this is irrelevant if you do not understand how screen reader users
visualise websites and pages, how they form a mental model and how they
navigate through it. You won't ever learn this by yourself. You really need
to spend a significant amount of time with someone who uses a screen reader
and see how they approach a variety of types of website. A few hours of this
will start to give you an insight but it would take days or weeks before you
could make a realistic assessment of the issues a screen reader user might
have when visiting a particular website.
My totally unbiased recommendation is that you save yourself a lot of
trouble and simply buy our user testing services.
Steve
_
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Simon Cockayne
Sent: 16 October 2007 09:35
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Which screen reader to test with?
Hi,
What screen reader(s) should one test with?
Seemingly WSG is keen on the development of web sites that are compatible
with vision-impaired users and more specifically those who use
screen-readers.
It's a laudable goal...but screen reader software seems quite
expensive...Jaws $1000 approx.
Is there a free screen reader?
Simon
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