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Re: Something's amiss with the latest survey

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From: Andrews, David B (DEED)
Date: Sep 1, 2015 7:51AM

First let me say I value Webaim and the annual survey. They are valuable resources to the community. In terms of percentages of using this or that, we do need to be careful though.

Clearly, in the past, Zoomtext was under-represented. This year's numbers come closer to fixing that. However, other aberrations also exist. While I know that Magic does not have the market share of Zoomtext, it is larger than zero. I work for a State Rehab agency and I know what we buy. Likewise, while anecdotal, my observation is that use of NVDA is increasing, not decreasing. I know this is true for myself. Also, lots of people have downloaded Window-Eyes, but my observation is that the number of daily users has not substantially increased. This comes from my work in a rehab agency, and my running over 250 listserv's for the NFB, where thousands of blind people post on lots of topics.

Finally, I may be old school in my views, but I separate screen readers from "screen enlargers," or "magnification software." Clearly the line has blurred somewhat, with Zoomtext and Magic offering more screen-reader-like features, but I do not know of any totally blind person using either one as a screen reader alone.

So, lots of good data, and it helps us see trends, but people shouldn't take the numbers literally.

Dave