In my last post, I began sharing many thoughts about my visit to IndependenceFirst on Monday, to attend “Multiple Facets of Accessible Design.” It was an excellent presentation facilitated by MilwauCHI.

I rambled so excitedly in my coverage of Shawn Henry’s presentation that I needed to split things up into multiple blog posts to do them justice.

The second presenter was Scott Mayer from American Family Insurance, a usability services specialist who became blind at the age of 24.

He led off with some interesting statistics about disabled people in the United States:

Scott then demonstrated how he uses the Internet via his JAWS screen reader. I’ve got to tell you, that was one of the most revealing experiences I’ve had since focusing on accessibility.

I’ve been tackling the subject in my own incremental way, and while I’ve watched a video here and there demonstrating screen readers, there was something completely different about seeing one in action.

Scott showed examples of good and bad accessibility using his screen reader. On one site, he showed how he was unable to pay a bill on a banking site because the actionable button for signing on was invisible to the screen reader.

Another interesting point – Scott talked about how many sites, particularly in the financial sector, tend to go through redesigns often. Some financial sites do it almost quarterly. While constant evolution and enhancement may seem like an all-around great idea, somebody like Scott has to completely re-learn how to get around that site each time they retool it.

Scott explained how automated accessibility testing is not enough. There is no replacement for usability testing with disabled users.

People tend to treat disabled consumers like Scott differently, thinking them to be less educated or poorer. He shared an experience in which he and his wife took their car in for repairs, and how the attendants didn’t even consider for a moment that a blind user may know something about car repairs. They barely acknowledged him.

Physical stores tend to be useless to somebody like Scott. He frequently utilizes the Internet to buy things and have them shipped to his home.

Just because somebody is blind, or deaf, or has some sort of disability, don’t assume they are less intelligent or some poor, destitute person. It may be easy for some businesses to dismiss what they assume is an insignificant minority of potential visitors to their web site, but there is an awful lot of ignorance steeped in that attitude.

And I haven’t even gotten to my first tour of IndependenceFirst! We’ll save that for next week’s posts!

Tags: assistive technology, IndependenceFIRST, jaws, milwauCHI, milwaukee, Scott Mayer, visually impaired

It’s one thing to summarize screen reader technology in a few sentences. It’s entirely more meaningful to watch one in action.

Victor Tsaran, an accessibility engineer at Yahoo, talks about and demonstrates how a blind user navigates their computer via a screen reader. It’s a revealing look into an experience of which most of us fully-sighted people have no frame of reference.

Of course, it should be noted that there is no captioning or text version of this video, for those with hearing disabilities.

Tags: assistive technology, screen readers, visually impaired

WebAIM recently posted results to a survey of screen reader users, conducted from December 2008 – January 2009. In Survey of Preferences of Screen Readers Users, they share very interesting results regarding the usage of screen reader technology in web navigating.

Some of the initial findings perhaps aren’t surprising. Of the 1121 participants, the vast majority (nearly 90%) use screen reader technology all of the time and because of a disability. 96% of them cited visual impairment, in most cases outright blindness.

The breakdown of screen reader usage is insightful:

• JAWS – 74%
• Windows Eyes – 23%
• NVDA – 8%
• VoiceOver – 6%

(WebAIM points out that percentages often don’t add up to 100% due to rounding, and in this case also because of the possibility of usage of multiple products)

Most of the participants utilize desktop PCs (78%), with just over half use screen readers on a laptop. Those using mobile technology with screen readers made up a much smaller 12%.

Lastly (for this post), web browser usage breaks down as follows:

• Internet Explorer 7 – 68%
• Firefox – 39%
• Internet Explorer 6 – 33%
• Safari – 6%
• Internet Explorer 8 – 2%

Amongst the nearly 7% of participants who used screen readers though were not disabled (some for evaluation purposes), Firefox usage was twice as prevalent. It was also noted that the question was not worded “primary” browser, just browser usage, and that IE8 and Safari were, essentially, write-in votes.

While none of this is exact science, the findings are all-around very interesting and offer a glimpse into the methods and practices of screen reader users.

I’ll close for now, having focused on the software and hardware findings. There are a slew of results covering browsing tendencies, from home page navigation to access keys to Flash and imagery frustrations/ease of use.

All in all, these results are well worth combing through and considering when evaluating accessibility, particularly as it relates to the visually impaired.

Tags: blindness, jaws, NVDA, screen readers, survey, visually impaired, VoiceOver, WebAIM, Windows Eyes