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Re: Cross Screen Reader testing

for

From: Steve Green
Date: May 16, 2020 3:00PM

Hi Weston,

Thanks for the information. Will the product work with all the different types of JAWS licensing? For instance, there's Perpetual (ILM) Licensing, which is different from Annual licensing. Some organisations set up their own licensing servers, whereas we use dongle licenses.

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of Weston Thayer
Sent: 16 May 2020 19:56
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Cross Screen Reader testing

Hi everyone, Weston here. I've been enjoying the conversations on this list for a while now, but haven't piped up. First, thank you for this resource, and second, now is probably as good a time as any to introduce myself.

I'm a designer/developer, and I've been working on Assistiv Labs for just over a year now, both to try and help solve pain points I've heard from others about testing with assistive technologies, and some of my own. More early access invitations are slowly going out, my timeline was unfortunately set back quite a bit by current events this spring.

The project has evolved quite a bit since I first put up the website, so I'll try to give a brief update here.

To your point Steve, I totally agree with your concerns about enabling inexperienced testers to do harm. Right now, I think the tool is best paired to accessibility professionals who are already trained in AT usage, and are testing on their own physical or virtual machines today. Assistiv Labs offers a few advantages, like repeatable, 100% isolated testing environments, keyboard shortcut remapping, and access to past, present, and future AT/browser versions. The latter is a feature I just got working, for example you can quickly jump between Firefox 76.0, 77.0 (beta), or all the way back to 62.0. Similarly, it supports NVDA 2020.1 through 2018.1. I find this especially handy for narrowing down exactly what version an AT or browser bug cropped up. The website is due for an update and the copy will be changed to reflect this focus.

For JAWS usage, you'll need to bring your own license (which must have Remote Desktop/Citrix® Support included). 40 minute mode will not work. I care very much about complying with each ATs license, and am open to feedback and ideas on how to make it even easier (for both vendors and end users).

Overall, I'm really focused on delivering a pleasant, low-latency remote testing experience that's as accessible as possible (i.e. test NVDA while using VoiceOver). There are a few limitations (read more in the Accessibility Statement <https://assistivlabs.com/accessibility>), but I'm hoping to overcome them in time.

Nice to meet you all, and please feel free to ask more questions here or email <EMAIL REMOVED> . I hope with your feedback, Assistiv Labs can be a useful tool someday.

Best,
Weston

On Sat, May 16, 2020 at 8:42 AM glen walker < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Since the website has minimal info, I did about 30 seconds of digging
> and the contact us page has <EMAIL REMOVED> as a contact
> person and if you google that email, you can find info on Weston
> Thayer, a designer. I'm sure you can contact him for more info.
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/weston-thayer-08aa5992/
> https://twitter.com/westonthayer5?lang=en
> http://westonthayer.com/
> > > archives at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> >