Access the survey at http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey2/. The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes. Please redistribute, particularly to screen reader and disability groups. The survey will remain open through October 2009.
As a follow-up and update to the original WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey, we are happy to provide an updated survey. By completing this survey you will help inform development choices for those creating accessible web content. All screen reader users, even those that use screen readers only for evaluation and testing, are invited to participate.
Blind people should be encouraged to learn and use VO on the Mac.
I just took this survey. I’ve been a Windows user for many years and like it a lot. However, I would someday like to try out VoiceOver. I’ve heard it put through its paces and it doesn’t sound bad at all. I am part of a website development team, and one of my duties is to evaluate the accessibility of websites which we link to on ours.
For the next one, I remember seeing this in the last survey under browsers:
“The percentage of Safari users is over double that of the overall population – this may be due in part to the fact that some in the Mac community actively solicited survey participation and encouraged respondents to indicate their Safari use, perhaps partially due to feeling snubbed because we didn’t list them with IE and Firefox as direct choices.”
The VoiceOver and Safari percentages should match, because Safari is the default browser for VoiceOver, and no other screen readers can work with Safari. Opera is another option for VoiceOver users, but I don’t think it has taken off yet.
The first survey was a really useful starting point and I look forward to seeing the results of the current survey, which our Comms team forwarded round the organisation to promote its use amongst our many screen reader users.
We will certainly be factoring in the results as part of our work improving the accessibility of our internal web applications, and appreciate the information you have already made available.
I have something to ad about colours and resolutions. Over 65% of all screens in the World are set to run at the 1024×768 resolution. Of the remaining percentage, 13% are running at 800×600, 20% running at larger sizes and 2% are unknown. So this affects the way you design. It would be my suggestion to always design for the smallest user to visit your site, but often I find 800×600 restrictive so I tend to design for slightly larger. Not large enough to make an 800×600 user angry but large enough to make it look good on larger screens also. I weigh up my target users, my intended amount of content and find some happy medium. I generally design for 1000×620 as this is the perfect amount of real estate for a 1024×768 user when they have the browser top bar and status bar and Windows taskbar.
Thx for sharing those informations (66% Jaws-User is really amazing)! Does there excist any new data especially for “Social Media Tools Frequently Used”?