[Athen] Screen Reader/Browser Combination

[Deborah Armstrong]

One thing I keep worrying about is the experience of low-vision folks who read a web page visually with magnification, not with speech.

I have enough vision I can see the colors on a page and not the words; I am a speech user.

And I’ve noticed that sighted folks expect the low-vision user to experience the web page the same way they do. But for just one example, take a page with information in two columns. The user might focus on one colunn with the magnification window and miss the second column altogether. I was helping my Mom with minimal macular degeneration and she was having this problem with a senior-oriented site.

And what about alerts that pop up? The low-vision user might not notice them. Again my Mom showed me how easily this happens.

OK, Mom isn’t a college student but neither is she a dummy. My concern is that when testing is so heavily focused on screen readers, sighted people forget this other population who actually might need more help than a typical screen reader user does, since the screen reader user often gets extensive training in how to use this complex AT.

And for every blind student I have, there are ten with partial sight. I am not a testing expert, but I do know we should be testing for this user base as well.

--Debee
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