WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: Screen readers or testing

for

From: Raleigh Way
Date: Jul 30, 2002 5:31PM


I've been following the discussion about the screen readers like Jaws
and IBM. How do Tablin and Lynx render a page?

Tablin:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/Tablin/form

Lynx:
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html

Do they read the page in a manner similar to how Jaws or IBM would
"speak" a page? If they render a page much like a text-to-speech
reader does, would this be a viable option? I guess nothing would
replace "speaking" a page, but it might be a good starting point.

Raleigh




>If you want to have a copy of the JAWS, which is probably the most
>popular screen reader, you can get a trial version from
>www.freedomscientific.com that never expires. The only caveat is that
>you can only use it for half an hour at a time, then you have to reboot
>your computer to use it again. JAWS is not as easy to learn as you might
>like it to be. You can see a list of JAWS keyboard shortcuts at
>http://www.webaim.org/howto/jaws_keyboard, but it will take some time to
>learn.
>
>A program that is easier to learn is Home Page Reader, by IBM. It's much
>more intuitive to visual users and is a high quality screen reader on
>par with JAWS. The functionality is not identical, but pretty close.
>Mostly it does things differently than JAWS, rather than better or
>worse. Home Page Reader costs about $125 (though it's been a while since
>I last checked the price).
>
>Paul Bohman
>
>
>