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

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: May 12, 2017 6:34PM

It is a fact that we have too little data on how many people with
disabilities use our sites and apps.
I wonder if it is the technical challenges that discourage us from
trying to find out, or if we are worried that the actual number of
people with disabilities who use our site is a lot less than we try to
indicate using general population percentages.
It shouldn't matter, but it would still be good to have numbers,
especially numbers that create a solid accessibility business case.
The dangerous thing about measuring only the number of people with
disabilities (if such a thing is possible) who use our site is that we
are not considering people who may simply have given up on using
technology, and that could be lured back to the site with more
options, better assistive technology and a more accessible web.
It's like tracking customer complaints, almost 80% of customers leave
sites they are not happy with and less than 10% of unhappy customers
actually bother to send in a complaint.
So if you start using customer complaint as a measure of how many
customers would benefit from fixing a particular website issue, you
might be under estimating that number by a factor of 10.




On 5/12/17, Jonathan Avila < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>> Are you suggesting then that any time a person is using the keyboard only,
>> that there is likely a screen reader involved there somewhere?
>
> No I am not. In fact I didn't say keyboard -- I said navigation with a
> screen reader. I can't go into details but I'd say that when a screen
> reader is active there are clues related to events and interactions, etc.
> that can accurately predict this. Similarly when only the keyboard is used
> or when speech recognition is used there are certain patterns of events and
> interactions that provide clues. For high contrast and zoom there are
> similar clues when you insert content and you see the aspects of that
> content changed by the user's browser settings.
>
>> I think we both know that's not always true - people with mobility issues
>> will also likely be using a keyboard only (or speech input), and / or
>> power-users who have a preference for the keyboard.
>
> And this is important information as well. Seeing power users use
> keystrokes can be motivation to add or tweak settings -- and it has nothing
> to do with disability.
>
>> WCAG says that all content must be accessible to the keyboard for that
>> specific reason, so meeting that requirement ensures that the content
>> remains accessible to all of those users.
>
> I agree that all content should be fully keyboard accessible. But there is
> more to keyboard access than simply being keyboard accessible. The
> discussions currently surrounding single key shortcuts and there benefits or
> detriment to speech recognition users is one example.
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan Avila
> Chief Accessibility Officer
> SSB BART Group
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> 703.637.8957 (Office)
>
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