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Re: Examples of virtual buffer user experience

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From: glen walker
Date: Jan 12, 2021 1:27PM

If you're talking about web testing and not native apps, so that you have
access to the html code behind the scenes, if I find a problem with one
screen reader (doesn't matter which one), I look at the html code for that
element to see what the problem is. If it's an error in the html code
(whether incorrect syntax, missing attribute, wrong ARIA attribute, etc),
then most likely you will hear the problem with all screen readers. Each
screen reader might surface the problem differently, and sometimes a screen
reader will use heuristics to "work around" the bad code such that you
don't hear the problem, but it's still a problem.

There are too many differences between VO, NVDA, and JAWS to list them
all. Some might say "pressed" or "selected". Some might say "landmark" or
"region". Some might say "clickable" or remain silent. If you have a
block element in a link (<div>, <p>, etc), then VO will make each block
element a separate VO "tab stop" and it will sound like you have several
links when in fact you only have one. That's just how VO works. You can
code around it specifically for VO by using the undocument role="text" but
unless the link is causing a serious UX issue, I don't recommend that. I
always lean towards writing spec-compliant html and if a particular screen
reader has a problem with it, it's usually the screen reader's fault.
Whether you want to work around it is an internal decision.

Another difference is with lists. If you turn off the list style, then VO
does not think a <ul>/<ol> is a list anymore. You have to add back in
role="list" and role="listitem". I haven't tested that recently but I
think it's still a VO problem.



On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 12:58 PM cb < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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
> > > > >