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Re: Excellent paper on how screen reader users interactwith webpages

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Apr 11, 2012 3:26PM

I won't say my experience is expansive, but I find the AT training of people to vary greatly.

My feeling is that people with disabilities probably don't have any better or worse level of training on their AT than the general population has with regards to technology. I think the big difference is that a lot of people learn how to use technology from other people--and most of the time people using AT probably don't have as great an access to peers so they can share techniques.

Most of the time, I have noticed that people using AT learn enough to do whatever they feel they need to do or desire strongly to do. They don't necessarily learn the optimal way, but just a way. If aI recall correctly, I think there is an usability research paper that refers to that as "satisficing" (satis-facing) which is the tendency of most users to learn a method of doing something and then stick with it even if there might be more efficient methods out there.

It would be great if people did learn how to use their AT better. However, I just consider it one of the issues I need to consider in design since typically it isn't one I can directly address. It definitely does add to the challenge.

I expect most of you might have run into such issues in the past. For instance, a screen reader or two has a feature that will allow them to do something but by default it is turned off. If just about everyone knows about that design feature, you might be able to design with it in mind. But if most people are not aware of it, then you could be creating a really bad design. That is part of the value of designing with standards as part of the foundation you build your UI's on.

Tim