[Athen] Screen Reader/Browser Combination

[Deborah Armstrong]

I’ve also noticed that amateur testers often want to test with a screen reader before trying basic things like whether they can navigate to an element with the keyboard, whether they can interact with an element with the keyboard – like a list box – and whether the graphics are labeled. I think a great deal of first tests can be performed without a user needing to know anything about a screen reader.

Sometimes I’ll get an email from someone who says they are having difficulty using a screen reader testing a site, but they haven’t even tried yet to see if other aspects are accessible, like graphics having alt tags first. Abnd if it fails a few automated accessibility checkers spectacularly, there would be no need to try the screen reader, anyway it seems to me.


--Debee


From: athen-list [mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Brandon Orwig-Price
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 11:09 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Screen Reader/Browser Combination

My experience has generally been the same as mentioned here.
Firefox-NVDA (also works for math content)
Chrome-JAWS/ChromeVox
Safari-Voiceover
Internet Explorer (not recommended except in extremely special cases) –JAWS
Edge-Narrator by far (it has especially came further in the last year of updates for windows, and continues to improve. Major changes coming in Redstone 5 [Oct/Nov 2018 windows 10 update.])

I generally try and mix them up as well, just as a double or triple checking mechanism, it can frequently lead to finding things that were not properly done. If there is one thing I wish JAWS/ChromeVox had it would be Speech Viewer which NVDA has. I do not rely on the speech from ZoomText (which I use due to low vision), but in Fusion it is not bad since it is JAWS.

Just my opinion and experiences,

~Brandon

Brandon Orwig-Price ǀ Access Specialist
Disability Services – Alternate Media
COLUMBUS STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
550 East Spring Street, Columbus, OH 43215
(614)287-5418 | borwigprice at cscc.edu<mailto:borwigprice at cscc.edu>

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Deborah Armstrong
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 1:57 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Screen Reader/Browser Combination

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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