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From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Dec 18 2008 1:50PM
Subject: Screen reader survey
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WebAIM is conducting a survey of screen reader users -
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

Web accessibility experts often say something like, "Screen reader
users prefer…" followed by some accessibility recommendation. However,
many of these recommendations are based on personal preference or
conjecture - often from sighted users who only test with screen
readers. The fact is that there is little data about screen reader
usage to back up these recommendations.

This survey will ask screen reader users about their usage and
preferences. If you are a full-time, part-time, or even occasional
screen reader user, please take a few minutes to complete the survey
and provide us with a few details on your screen reader usage and
preferences. We will be comparing results between those that rely on
screen readers and those that primarily use them for evaluation and
testing, so all screen reader users are invited to respond. Your
feedback will help influence the accessibility techniques that web
developers implement and that experts recommend. We'll be posting the
survey results in a few months.

Please post this announcement and/or the URL to other accessibility,
disability, and assistive technology lists. More screen reader user
responses will help solidify the recommendations made.

http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

Jared Smith
WebAIM

From: Daniel Tang (dtang)
Date: Fri, Dec 19 2008 3:20PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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Hello Jared:

This is a great deed serving the user community.


Daniel Tang
Accessibility Specialist CCIE # 3681
Cisco Systems
170 W. Tasman
San Jose, CA 95134
Phone: 408 526 7814
Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 6:50AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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At 21:50 18/12/2008, you wrote:
>WebAIM is conducting a survey of screen reader users -
>http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/
>
>Web accessibility experts often say something like, "Screen reader
>users prefer…" followed by some accessibility recommendation. However,
>many of these recommendations are based on personal preference or
>conjecture - often from sighted users who only test with screen
>readers. The fact is that there is little data about screen reader
>usage to back up these recommendations.

I noticed that they survey is only available in
English, so I hope that the results will be
published with a clear disclaimer that the data
were provided by English-speaking screen reader
users and that the results are not necessarily
representative of screen reader users who speak
other languages (at least with regard to the
screen readers that people use - JAWS may be the
most common screen reader in some countries, but not everywhere).

I can send a request for translations to French
and German accessibility mailing lists, but the
timing is unfortunate because people are
currently planning translations for WCAG 2 and other supporting materials.

Best regards,

Christophe Strobbe



>This survey will ask screen reader users about their usage and
>preferences. If you are a full-time, part-time, or even occasional
>screen reader user, please take a few minutes to complete the survey
>and provide us with a few details on your screen reader usage and
>preferences. We will be comparing results between those that rely on
>screen readers and those that primarily use them for evaluation and
>testing, so all screen reader users are invited to respond. Your
>feedback will help influence the accessibility techniques that web
>developers implement and that experts recommend. We'll be posting the
>survey results in a few months.
>
>Please post this announcement and/or the URL to other accessibility,
>disability, and assistive technology lists. More screen reader user
>responses will help solidify the recommendations made.
>
>http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/
>
>Jared Smith
>WebAIM


--
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 bus 2442
B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/
---
Please don't invite me to LinkedIn, Facebook,
Quechup or other "social networks". You may have
agreed to their "privacy policy", but I haven't.


Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm

From: Karl Groves
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 7:15AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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>

From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 7:20AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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2008/12/20 Karl Groves < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >:>
> Excellent point, Christophe. Along those same lines, I can probably get
> translations for a number of other major languages. Jared, if you're
> interested, let me know.
>
I guess it could also be very interesting if you can find people to
translate it to langauges that don't use the latin alphabet.

Emma
--
Emma Duke-Williams:
School of Computing/ Faculty eLearning Co-ordinator, University of
Portsmouth, UK.
Blog: http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/

From: Karl Groves
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 7:30AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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>

From: Peter Krantz
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 7:45AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 15:25, Karl Groves
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

> I can't make any promises, but I do have a number of people I can ask who
> work with my wife who could translate it into Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese,
> Korean, and possibly Farsi and Russian.

And I'll translate it to Swedish and try to make sure it will reach
the community here if anyone is interested.

Regards,

Peter Krantz

From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 10:00AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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At 15:25 20/12/2008, Karl Groves wrote:

> >

From: Jared Smith
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 12:15PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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The response so far to the survey has been tremendous - over 600
respondents so far. The data we are collecting is amazing. Thank you
to all who have spread the word.

Regarding translations, we don't currently have the capabilities to
provide translations in multiple languages, but we have had several
people offer to provide them. I'm sure there would be minor
discrepancies in meaning - and of course the free form responses will
be difficult to compile with those in English. However, if others
would like to provide translated surveys, we give full permission to
use the survey content. If you are willing to provide and host the
translation and compile data, we will happily publish the results with
our findings and provide analysis of any differences. We will also
provide a link to the translations.

If you're interested in doing this, contact me off-list and I'll
coordinate the translation efforts for various languages.

Jared Smith
WebAIM

From: Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 2:35PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 8:50 PM, Jared Smith < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> WebAIM is conducting a survey of screen reader users -
> http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

You might want to tweak this wording from the survey:

"The next page provides a confirmation of your responses."

I assumed that meant the next page would actually list your responses,
but that doesn't seem to be the case.

This appears to be confusing some participants:

http://macvisionaries.com/pipermail/discuss_macvisionaries.com/2008-December/041381.html

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis

From: Jared Smith
Date: Sat, Dec 20 2008 4:35PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> You might want to tweak this wording from the survey:
>
> "The next page provides a confirmation of your responses."

I have clarified the language. We'll program the "Next" page to show
the actual responses soon.

Jared Smith
WebAIM

From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Mon, Dec 29 2008 3:00PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey
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Jared, thanks for setting up this survey. I'll be among the highly
interested when the results are available.

I'm not sure these points will be revealed by your survey, but I wonder
about them:

-1- How many screen-reader users who rely on lists of headings have no
idea what headings should reveal? I asked one who works for an
accessibility mover and shaker to evaluate for me a page that had this
semantic structure, and she said she would have no trouble with it at
all (not exactly the ammo I needed to get the "owner" to fix it):
[no h1]
<h2>Site Navigation</h2>
<h4>nav link</h4>
<h4>nav link</h4>
etc...

<h5>Some other standard link in the left column</h5>

<p><font>Title</font></p>
<ul>
<li>link to subheading 1</li>
<li>link to subheading 2</li>
</ul>
<h3>Subheading 1</h3>
<p>Each subheading is an h3 because the font style for the title makes
the title about the same size as an h2 would be.</p>
<h3>Subheading 2</h3>
<p>blech blech</p>
etc...

-2- How many screen-reader users even know they can tune their software
to reveal link attributes (such as "title") rather than link text? At a
recent accessibility competition, a couple of the testers (not
judges---the testers were people who rely on AT; their role was to give
feedback to the teams before the coding session was over) were amazed to
learn that they could do this.

Depending on the outcome of your study, these might be worth working in
to a future one. But you are going to reveal a great deal of helpful
information.

Thanks!

Cliff Tyllick
Web development coordinator
Agency Communications Division
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
512-239-4516
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =

>>> "Jared Smith" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > 12/18/2008 2:50 PM >>>
WebAIM is conducting a survey of screen reader users -
http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

Web accessibility experts often say something like, "Screen reader
users prefer*" followed by some accessibility recommendation. However,
many of these recommendations are based on personal preference or
conjecture - often from sighted users who only test with screen
readers. The fact is that there is little data about screen reader
usage to back up these recommendations.

This survey will ask screen reader users about their usage and
preferences. If you are a full-time, part-time, or even occasional
screen reader user, please take a few minutes to complete the survey
and provide us with a few details on your screen reader usage and
preferences. We will be comparing results between those that rely on
screen readers and those that primarily use them for evaluation and
testing, so all screen reader users are invited to respond. Your
feedback will help influence the accessibility techniques that web
developers implement and that experts recommend. We'll be posting the
survey results in a few months.

Please post this announcement and/or the URL to other accessibility,
disability, and assistive technology lists. More screen reader user
responses will help solidify the recommendations made.

http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

Jared Smith
WebAIM

From: Jared Smith
Date: Sat, Jan 31 2009 4:40PM
Subject: Screen reader survey results
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Initial results from our screen reader survey are now available. LOTS
of good info and data. Thank you to all that participated.

http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

Jared Smith
WebAIM

From: Phil Teare
Date: Sun, Feb 01 2009 6:20AM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey results
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Thank you so much for this.

Well done too, for doing such a good job of it.

Best
Phil

Phil Teare,
CTO & Chief Architect, TEXTIC Ltd
http://www.textic.com

Mob: ++44 [0]787260215
Home: ++44 [0]1628621432


2009/1/31 Jared Smith < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >

> Initial results from our screen reader survey are now available. LOTS
> of good info and data. Thank you to all that participated.
>
> http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/
>
> Jared Smith
> WebAIM
>

From: Jorge Fernandes
Date: Sun, Feb 01 2009 4:00PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey results
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The questions are very good and the number of answers was amazing.
Congratulations for that. I really appreciate the data about the
importance of headings in structure and also some thoughts about alt
in images. Really curious!! Really thanks for sharing.

Any reason to don't ask about structure of menus (marked like lists)?

Jorge Fernandes
universalaccess.blogspot.com

On 31 Jan 2009, at 23:38, Jared Smith wrote:

> Initial results from our screen reader survey are now available. LOTS
> of good info and data. Thank you to all that participated.
>
> http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/
>
> Jared Smith
> WebAIM
>

From: Jared Smith
Date: Sun, Feb 01 2009 5:20PM
Subject: Re: Screen reader survey results
← Previous message | No next message

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Jorge Fernandes < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> Any reason to don't ask about structure of menus (marked like lists)?

I'll note this for possible inclusion in a future survey. We struggled
with asking fairly technical questions such as this knowing that many
of the respondents would not be very technically savvy and may not
understand the question. In the future, we may present numerous cases
and allow the user to provide feedback about actual examples.

Jared Smith
WebAIM