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Re: Browser and Screen Reader Combination

for

From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 23, 2019 12:09AM

You can test with any combination you like as long as you don't fool yourself or your client into thinking you have achieved more coverage than you actually have. Some issues will affect all screen readers, but others will only affect certain ones. For instance, testing with NVDA and Narrator will not find all the issues that would occur with JAWS.

Also, screen readers do not work exactly the same on all browsers. If you test with Chrome and NVDA, you will not find some of the issues that occur with Firefox and NVDA. There might not be many, but there is no way to know how important they are.

There are also differences between different versions of the same screen reader.

You have to learn to live with this uncertainty because there is no such thing as "total coverage" and even 95% coverage would require testing with a large number of combinations. The two combinations you propose probably cover no more than 5%. Any two combinations probably won't cover more than 15% (less than that if you can't use JAWS).

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd