Re: Screen readers - usage stats?

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, ADAM GUASCH-MELENDEZ wrote:

and one area that I keep harping on and is so often overlooked because the
people are not very vocal, THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES, these folks are barely
accessing the web, example, the Main independent living center in
Nicaragua is accessing the web via a dial up modem at 2400baud on an
AppleII computer.  this is the prime access point for disabled folks in an
entire country.  the WWW MUST be able to be accessed in a very basic way
by these folks, one form of disabled access is $$$$ the vast majority of
people with disabilities live in poverty and cannot afford the latest and
greatest.   bandwidth is a real factor in many people with disabilities
access to the internet.... there needs to always be a basic form of
access.  if you are paying 5cents a minute to access the web a site is
useless if it takes two hours to load.....

PINE and/or LYNX are the durable, robust and common e-mail and web
browsers in the third world.......

Bob


>
> When writing and testing HTML, it's standard practice to test with
> multiple browsers and multiple versions of those browsers. It's also
> pretty standard to look at usage stats for those browsers - how many
> people are still using IE 4.0 or Netscape 4.7? Such statistics are often
> unreliable, but they're still worth considering, especially if pulled
> from your own server logs.
>
> What about screen readers? Is there any available information on usage
> of various screen readers, and specifically on version? Obviously
> statistics in this case would be difficult to compile, since you can't
> simply pull the information from server logs. But it would be valuable.
>
> As an example: for a particular upcoming project, tagged PDF files are
> being considered as the primary document format. When discussing the
> need, if any, for alternative versions, it would be helpful to know how
> many users of screen readers would be able to read a tagged PDF file,
> and how many are using software that can't handle that format.
>
> Please note: I'm not asking for opinions on the need for alternative
> versions - this is just an example of one situation in which having
> statistics would be valuable.
>
> Any pointers to any real numbers would be greatly appreciated.
>

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Received on Wednesday, 14 April 2004 19:52:23 UTC