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Re: Using a Mouse with a Screen Reader

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From: Jonathan Avila
Date: Aug 25, 2017 12:56PM

Testing a screen reader with a keyboard is the recommended path of operating the screen reader. In my experience screen readers are not fully designed to work with a mouse and the results may vary. I've seen a lot of crazy results from non-screen reader users who perform a command like a say all and then press enter while the say all is occurring and then fail something because the screen reader did not activate the item or activated the wrong item. Clearly the non-screen reader tester did not know how a screen reader is designed to work. Interestingly enough WCAG 2 assumes mouse/pointer access and does not have a requirement for pointer access -- only keyboard access.

Jonathan

Jonathan Avila
Chief Accessibility Officer
Level Access, inc. (formerly SSB BART Group, inc.)
(703) 637-8957
<EMAIL REMOVED>
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-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Sarah Jevnikar
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 2:51 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Using a Mouse with a Screen Reader

Hi all,
I've been evaluating some accessibility tickets of potential WCAG level A failures, but the original tests were run with a mouse and a screen reader. I use a screen reader but can't use a mouse, and can't replicate the problems the original tests indicated. Is a screen reader user with a mouse a viable test case to explore? If a mouse user finds different results than a keyboard user, does this suggest a WCAG failure, as possibly a failure of 2.1.1? How might something like that be rectified?
Thank you for your help,
Sarah