Michael Yeaney wrote:
Are there any recommendations for screen readers to test with???? I'd like to at least 'preview' what our site(s) sound like to such a user.
It's probably worth mentioning that unless you invest a considerable amount of time becoming familiar with a screen reader, and use it just as a *real* screen reader user uses it, any testing may lead you to the wrong type of conclusion, or worse tempt you to "optimise" your pages to please a specific reader (akin to coding to a specific browser).
An amusing anecdote I usually recount: a well intentioned, but rather clueless colleague of mine once sat down to test her site with JAWS. A few days later she suggested to me that it may be worth splitting up all her pages into really short, bite-size pages with "next" links, as she was appalled at the fact that, once she loaded a page, JAWS would take almost a minute to read the whole page top to bottom. I had to point out that, under normal circumstances, users of screen readers will not just load a page, sit back, and listen to the entire thing in one go...that the use of screen readers is an interactive process and that they'd employ various techniques like getting an overview of structure (headings list etc), jump between paragraphs, backtrack, increase/decrease reading speed, and so forth. Moral of the story: had I not explained this to her, she would have (with the best intentions, of course) completely ripped her site apart in an effort to make it "more accessible". An extreme example, but worth keeping in mind...
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