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Examples of virtual buffer user experience

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From: cb
Date: Jan 12, 2021 12:57PM

Hey all,

I'm looking for concrete examples of how user experience differs between
VoiceOver on Mac and Jaws or NVDA on Windows. (Or more generally, between a
screenreader that uses a virtual buffer and one that doesn't.)

The context is that my colleagues and I do a lot of talking to developers
who use the Mac platform and test their own code for accessibility using
VoiceOver. If we report a bug we've discovered via Jaws or NVDA, we often
get pushback that they can't reproduce it on VoiceOver.

I can send them the WebAIM screenreader survey results that show
demographics and usage statistics, and I can talk generally about the
differences between the tools, but I'd love to have some illustrative
examples of types of things they miss when they rely solely on tests
conducted with VoiceOver. These could be accessibility violations, bugs,
big differences in UX, etc.

Have you run across something that makes a good example that I could
explain to people with varying levels of coding and accessibility
expertise? And for my own education, I'd like to hear more about the
low-level differences between platforms so I can get better at diagnosing
these issues.

Thanks

Caroline