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: [email protected] 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 ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
