WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Cross Screen Reader testing

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From: Steve Green
Date: May 16, 2020 7:15AM

I had not heard of this, so I have just subscribed. My first thought is that it looks like a cheap way for a lot of people to do really bad testing. If someone wants to do assistive technology testing, the first step should be to get a lot of experience observing how people use assistive technologies, how they navigate websites, web pages and mobile apps, and learning what does and does not cause problems for them. Only then should they install and use the assistive technology. This website encourages people to jump straight in without any understanding at all. As such, it could do more harm than good.

My second thought was that this constitutes a clear violation of the JAWS license unless they have done a deal with Freedom Scientific. There is no mention of this on the website.

As for how well the virtualised service matches the behaviour on a real machine, we won't know until the service goes live.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd