WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Web development; How to identify if a screen reader is in use

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: May 12, 2017 1:29PM

I think I understand the arguments for both sides. I tend to find myself favoring the side of no AT detection. I suspect in the current environment it would just be grossly misused--even though it might prove useful for those of us who want some more data.

It would be great if we could come up with at least some partial solution. We really could use something like object detection for things like aria.

Simplified, in object detection, you find out what a browser supports by checking to see if an object or its attributes are present. No support, no object or attribute. Unfortunately, I expect it would take a lot of work to implement something like this since you would only want a browser to make those attributes and objects available if both the browser and the active AT support it.