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Re: screen reader versions for testing

for

From: JP Jamous
Date: Oct 29, 2016 5:07AM


Here we test with the latest versions of JAWS/Internet Explorer, NVDA/Firefox and Voiceover/Safari.

It makes it a bit hard to find the happy medium as all 3 screen readers render HTML markup differently. To achieve the happy medium, we try to focus on proper semantic whenever we can. Sometimes that is not possible and we notice that NVDA and Voiceover tend to behave similarly, but JAWS is different since it drills deeper into the markup.

We do test every now and then with older versions of the 3 screen readers in case we run into an issue. As a good example, aria-describedby and aria-labelledby were not supported with Voiceover on iOS 10. We tested our code against iOS 9.4 and found that it worked fine. That was when we realized that it was a bug on behalf of Apple.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Beranek, Nicholas
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 9:46 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] screen reader versions for testing

We test primarily with the latest versions of NVDA and Firefox. We've found that JAWS will compensate for bad coding practices (e.g. A missing programmatic label but adjacent text was present) and there were possibilities that it missed certain issues. If there is ever any question about the results from NVDA; then we'll try another browser. If it persists, we try another screen reader such as JAWS. Sometimes, we'll find that it's simply a user agent issue and we'll do our best to file a bug.

For responsive, we'll test the latest version of iOS with VoiceOver and Safari. Utilizing subject matter expertise: knowledge of the guidelines, nuances between screen readers, browsers, and operating systems, front-end development experience, other tools such as aXe and MSAA Object Inspect, the community, ARIA design patterns, and I could go on further, we're able to qualify that we've done our absolute best.

I hope this helps,

Nick Beranek
Capital One

> On Oct 28, 2016, at 4:54 PM, Mallory < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> Kinda the same here: test with current (sometimes the tester doesn't
> have the absolute most-current either), and things that don't work, we
> look them up to see if it's some known bug, if it was fixes, which
> versions were affected. In general being up to date for some big bugs
> so that if things work with a current version, we can be more aware it
> may fail in an older version.
>
> One thing I try to keep in mind is wealthy web developers tend to have
> the latest and greatest. But the same usually can't be said for our
> customers, so it's dangerous for us to assume "passes in latest" => works for everyone.
>
> cheers,
> _mallory
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2016, at 09:42 PM, Moore,Michael (Accessibility)
> (HHSC)
> wrote:
>> Generally we test with the current release of JAWS. This is after we
>> have thoroughly analyzed the code. If we run into unexpected problems
>> then we will test with current release of NVDA, older versions of
>> JAWS, more browsers etc. What we are doing at that point is
>> attempting to determine who to file the defect with, what possible
>> work arounds exist, and whether we can justify changing code that is technically compliant.
>>
>> Mike Moore
>> Accessibility Coordinator
>> Texas Health and Human Services Commission Civil Rights Office
>> (512) 438-3431 (Office)
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On
>> Behalf Of Delisi, Jennie (MNIT)
>> Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 1:22 PM
>> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>> Subject: [WebAIM] screen reader versions for testing
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Interested in feedback. For those that test websites and documents
>> for accessibility against the standards, but also use screen readers
>> as a part of the testing protocols:
>>
>> -how many versions do you test with? For example, if there is a
>> version
>> 17 and a version 18 of the same screen reader, are you testing with
>> the current version and 1 version back?
>>
>> -for those testing websites and documents that will be reviewed by
>> the public, do you have a different number of versions you test with,
>> as opposed to documents that will only be used internally? For
>> example, there may be an expectation of employees having access to
>> the latest version of a particular screen reader (with maybe one
>> version back for a period of time), but the public may have varying
>> amounts of resources to put towards upgrades.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any information you can share. I will be cross
>> posting this on the IAAP list and LinkedIn.
>>
>> Jennie
>>
>> Jennie Delisi
>> Accessibility Analyst | Office of Accessibility Minnesota IT Services
>> | Partners in Performance
>> 658 Cedar Street
>> St. Paul, MN, 55155
>> O: 651-201-1135
>> Information Technology for Minnesota Government|mn.gov/mnit
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >> >> >> archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> > > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
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