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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


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Steve Sawczyn
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 7:34 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Something's amiss with the latest survey

I agree, this would be a very helpful breakdown. I get that ZoomText has screen reader functionality, but have yet to meet a totally blind person using it as their primary solution. In addition, there are both Mac and PC versions of ZoomText, is there a way to determine what percentage use which platform?

Steve

On 8/31/2015 7:15 PM, Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote:
> Jared,
> I don't recall seeing the "disability type" question in the past, but do note that it is there in survey #6 and think that it would be very interesting to see a breakdown of top primary AT used by end-users who place themselves into the different categories.
>
> I certainly agree with the sentiments of others that the survey is useful and I appreciate WebAIM taking this (and the resulting comments and critiques) on year after year, and also that we shouldn't read too much into the results (e.g. No one wants to hear "now we only test with JAWS and Zoom-Text!").
>
> AWK
>
>
>
> On 8/28/15, 17:02, "WebAIM-Forum on behalf of Jared Smith" < <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
>> Jordan Wilson wrote:
>>> I would suggest using the "Commonly Used" statistic a little lower
>>> down on the page instead of the "Primacy Screen Reader" statistic.
>>>
>>> That statistic is a bit more in line w/ what we've seen in the past,
>>> and it better reflects the number of users who use each platform
>>> overall. Its a better complete measurement of usage.
>>
>> We report both sets of statistics because they represent different things.
>>
>> I think focusing on Primary Screen Reader values is important. It
>> better represents what a screen reader user's initial experience is
>> most likely to be. If there are support issues, most screen reader
>> users can then, if they have one, fall back to one of the other
>> screen readers they commonly use. As noted in the article,
>> Window-Eyes and ZoomText users tend not to use other screen readers,
>> thus making the Primary number more relevant... at least to them.
>>
>> Jared
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> > > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >