Category: screenreader

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Screen Reader User Survey 7 Results from WebAIM

In December 2017, results of Screen Reader User Survey #7 by WebAIM were released. The survey was conducted in October and had 1,792 valid responses. The survey had less respondents than the previous survey, but had better world-wide representation.

Highlights:

  • Primary screen reader usage: JAWS 46.6%; NVDA 31.9%; VoiceOver 11.7%.
  • CAPTCHA remains the most problematic item.
  • The second most problematic item is now “Screens or parts of screens that change unexpectedly”. This is surely due to complex designs and SPAs/JS frameworks.
  • Web accessibility basics (keyboard access, alt text, forms, headings, data tables) are still in top 10 of most problematic.
  • When asked if more accessible web sites or better assistive technology would have a bigger impact on accessibility, 85.3% responded more accessible web sites.
  • Sadly, frequent use of landmarks and regions dropped to 30.5%. WebAIM states that this may be “due to infrequent or improper usage of landmarks/regions in pages”.
  • 33.3% reported using Braille output with a screen reader.
  • 41.4% reported using an external keyboard with a mobile device and screen reader.

I highly recommend you also read WebAIM’s summary of Screen Reader User Survey.

More:

WebAIM web accessibility in mind

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"assistive technology" screenreader survey webaim

Assistive Technology Surveys

Digital accessibility experts are often asked about the usage of screen readers and assistive technologies. For example, one will often ask “What’s the most popular screen reader?” This is difficult (if not impossible) to determine technically, but also has privacy implications and other problems.

The following two surveys provide great data and are provided by very reputable organizations. Keep in mind though that the respondents were not controlled and the sample sizes are relatively low.

Are you aware of any other recent surveys?

Related:

A person using a laptop computer wearing headphones and touching a braille output device.
A person using assistive technology.
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Apple’s Inaccessibility

Apple has traditionally been a great advocate and model for accessibility and technology. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the case lately. One could even argue that default settings and recent designs are even counterproductive to accessibility progress. This includes VoiceOver, keyboard access, and design decisions.

Bug Infested

To begin, let’s reference a recent article by Marco Zehe where he explains major VoiceOver bugs in OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and iOS 8. The two major examples he cites are:

  • When VoiceOver is running on the iPhone, using the Back button (or Scrub gesture to return to the previous page) will freeze VoiceOver.
  • When VoiceOver is running on the iPad, using Safari and the use of WebView components trigger app crashes and OS restarts.

In addition to bugs, I’ve noticed the following blatant accessibility problems pop up in Apple’s products. Each of these alone may not be a showstopper but collectively it shows a pattern of a company that doesn’t care, or pay much attention any longer; a company that’s losing its edge.

VoiceOver Hints

By default, VoiceOver places a large delay when announcing “hints”; this creates a huge lag for the reading of text defined by the aria-describedby attribute. And we all know that the support of aria-describedby is becoming more and more prevalent and essential in today’s world of modern web development. The delay is so long that it creates confusion; developers and testers very often think something is broken.

To “fix” the setting, you must find the deeply buried option and modify the delay time; in System Preferences, go to Accessibility / VoiceOver / VoiceOver Utility / Verbosity / Announcements (in OSX 10.9, it’s the the last setting).

Keyboard Access

A great example of Apple’s inaccessibility is the setting for keyboard focus; by default it doesn’t allow for typical keyboard navigation! A user cannot use the tab key to access all controls in an interface. In order to fix, one must again, search for the appropriate settings and modify. Again, this can be confusing and frustrating for developers and testers, let alone regular users.

To fix, the first step is to go to System Preferences / Keyboard / Shortcuts, and in the last section “Full Keyboard Access”, ensure the radio options “All Controls” is selected.

Let’s refer to the follow articles for more details on how to resolve which includes specific browser settings:

Design Problems

There are two major design issues by Apple recently which hinders accessibility: animations and parallax effects, and flat design.

There are many vestibular-related issues in Apple’s design, most notably during the release of iOS7. The issue continues to iOS8 although iOS settings are now available to help resolve the issue. To reduce parallax-type effects in iOS, go to Settings / General / Accessibility / Reduce Motion.

Also, iOS flat design (and the trend in general) is bad for usability and accessibility. Mostly because flat design creates ambiguity between elements; as the Nielsen Norman Group report states, “flat design hides calls to action“. And by implementing flat design, Apple indirectly encouraged others to do the same.

In addition to Nielsen Norman Group’s finding, another usability expert Steve Krug agrees that flat design is a detrimental practice. Here’s a quote from his book which was tweeted last May:

Hope and Warning

Let’s hope Apple returns to the practice of releasing quality products: everything just works and accessibility is continually improving. And fair warning, after the mobile wars a few years ago, Google tops Apple in mobile operating systems; will accessibility be next?

Related Reading

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screenreader

Detecting Screen Readers – No

There has been much discussion about the idea of detecting a screen reader from a website and optimizing the code. In the W3C editor’s draft IndieUI 1.0: User Context, screen reader detection is proposed. This scares me and many others in the web accessibility community.

In the recent publishing of the WebAIM screen reader survey, one of the questions is “How comfortable would you be with allowing web sites to detect whether you are using a screen reader?”. Surprisingly 54% of respondents replied “Very comfortable”. This sure sparked some discussion on Twitter and on blogs.

For the most part, detecting a screen reader has been ill-received from the accessibility community. I am also strongly opposed to this idea.

The reasoning boils down to two issues: development and privacy. And it’s bad for both. Here are some reasons why it’d be bad for development:

  • Text-only websites didn’t work before and you know devs will do this if a mechanism is provided.
  • Screen reader detection is eerily similar to the browser-sniffing technique which has proven to be a poor practice.
  • Maintaining separate channels of code is a nightmare; developers overloaded already with supporting multiple browsers, devices, etc (via RWD). And if done, it will many times become outdated if not entirely forgotten about.
  • Why screen reader detection? If you follow that logic, then detection should be provided for screen magnifiers, braille output devices, onscreen keyboards, voice-recognition, etc. That’s just crazy.

Let’s hope screen reader detection is removed from the W3C draft of IndieUI 1.0: User Context.

PS: Interestingly, @LFLegal recently announced that Safeway is (finally) removing a text-only version of its website in the blog Separate is Not Equal: Good News for Grocery Delivery.

Further reading:

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Easy ARIA from Marco

Here’s a great blog series on ARIA techniques from Marco Zehe (@MarcoInEnglish) of Mozilla. The content is well over a couple years old now, but still very relevant and useful. Goes to show how leading edge Marco and Mozilla are!