WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Is VoiceOver more similar to NVDA or JAWS with respect to the accessibility tree?

for

From: glen walker
Date: Jun 3, 2020 9:50AM

Yeah, I figured the heuristics might be IP so was looking for more
anecdotal info. Anything people might have observed when comparing screen
readers. The missing label is the most common one I'm aware of.

But I don't totally agree with your WCAG audit definition but that might be
more about terminology.

> A WCAG audit should be done by inspection of the code and user interface, *using
tools *where they are helpful.

I consider a screen reader a *tool* used to test for WCAG conformance. It
helps me find bugs. I'm not using the screen reader to emulate a user
experience. I treat a screen reader like I do a color contrast analyzer or
html validator or a page scanning tool or a bookmarklet. It's just one of
many tools in my toolbox.



On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 8:54 AM Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:

> Since the heuristics are a significant piece of intellectual property for
> an AT vendor, I would be very surprised if any vendor published theirs.
> That said, I too would be very interested if there are such lists.
>
> I would also make the point (again) that there is a difference between
> doing a WCAG audit and an accessibility audit. It is not necessary to use
> any assistive technologies when doing a WCAG audit, and arguably you should
> not use them. A WCAG audit should be done by inspection of the code and
> user interface, using tools where they are helpful. The behaviour of
> assistive technologies is irrelevant and unhelpful.
>
> By contrast, an accessibility audit can be anything you want it to be, and
> you may well choose to include testing the user experience with one or more
> screen readers. The choice of operating system, browser and AT should be
> determined by factors such as your audience and contractual obligations. I
> would go so far as to say it's unprofessional to test with a particular
> platform simply because it's what you've got or what you want to use.
>
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> glen walker
> Sent: 03 June 2020 15:39
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Subject: [WebAIM] Is VoiceOver more similar to NVDA or JAWS with respect
> to the accessibility tree?
>
> Not in functionality or features but in how it interprets the
> accessibility tree. For example,
>
> First Name <input>
>
> If a label is not associated with an input element, NVDA will not "guess"
> at what the label should be. It won't say anything except "edit". Both
> JAWS and VoiceOver (Mac and iOS) will say "First Name" for the label even
> though it's not in the accessibility tree.
>
> So for testing purposes, NVDA is more "pure" and can help find a11y bugs.
> I've known JAWS has some built in heuristics for fixing bad html but
> wasn't sure what VoiceOver had built in. With respect to input labels,
> JAWS and VoiceOver seem to work the same. Are there other heuristics that
> are similar between the two?
>
> One of the reasons I'm asking is because a customer wants to do all their
> testing on the Mac. I was trying to convince them that there might be bugs
> that are missed because VoiceOver is trying to be nice but I wasn't sure
> how many things VO is nice about. Is there a list of heuristics that both
> JAWS and VoiceOver have to overcome bad html?
> > > at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > >