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Re: Web Analytics

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Apr 10, 2012 10:05AM

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 9:09 AM, Ryan Hemphill wrote:

>  Developers who are doing Rich Internet Apps need to know what you are
> using especially when the RIA becomes complex.

As you note, you can, to some extent, detect screen readers (though I
think there are flaws in most of the methods you prescribe). The real
question is what would/should developers do with this knowledge?

Trying to address quirks, bugs, inconsistencies, and incompatibilities
in assistive technologies is a never ending process. You'll drive your
development staff mad trying to make things work perfectly across
assistive technologies. It cannot be done. The bulk of these problems
should not lie on developers, but on the assistive technology vendors.
They will never address these issues if developers continually cater
to them. If a developer follows standards and builds a web app
accessibly, yet it is not accessible due to a bug in a screen reader,
is that the developer's fault?

As Birkir notes, our efforts would be much better spent in improving
AT support for standards rather than catering to their lack of
standards support. With that said, we need to be considerate of the
end user experience. But providing distinct user experiences,
customized code, and hacks per screen reader or screen reader version
is going down a hole that has no bottom.

Jared