- From: David Poehlman <poehlman1@comcast.net>
- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 21:41:58 -0400
- To: "Ian Anderson" <lists@zstudio.co.uk>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
There is no clear answer from here on your issue but perhaps there is a best practices somewhere. I always look for something independant of the at issues to work with becaused you are on more solid ground if you do. Other wise,to be fair, you have to do a lot more testing with other environments as has been pointed out. Even if market stats claim 95 percent of screen reader sales are jaws, that may not even nearly accurately reflect what is really going on around the world. You can do one of two things with regard to market share. You can do your best to find out what that market is for a limitted audience say the uk for instance or you can assume that your site needs to work with the most challenging environment that it should reasonably be expected to work with. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Anderson" <lists@zstudio.co.uk> To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@comcast.net> Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 7:57 PM Subject: Re: Screen readers - usage stats? > Actually, what *I* was going for with my comment on screen reader stats was > to place the emphasis on technology as a whole rather than screen readers > specifically due to the variance in environments and configuration > preferences. you cannot possibly second guess every one so rather than try > to figure out who uses the most of this or that, it's best to take an > approach that provides for the broadest access possible as you say in your > message below. In other words, If you find that one screen reader is the > most popular or gets the most dollars, coding for that will leave out a lot > of people. I don't disagree with you, in the main. I am sure we all agree that broadest possible access is our overriding goal. What the heck are we bothering with all this for, if that is not our core belief? What I am not clear on is the connection that is being made between optimising the user experience for one group of users with "leaving out" a lot of others. These are not the same thing. Here's an analogy. A film is broadcast in widescreen. Those people with older TV sets (me, for example) either get black bars top and bottom, or the left and right edges are cropped, or a mixture of both. Those users who spent money on a widescreen TV may see the film in its proper format. But if it's broadcast in a modified 4:3 version, it's the users with widescreen TVs who get cropping, or black bars, or a stretched picture. This time the widescreen tv users lose out, and the users of older TVs don't have an incentive to upgrade. Either way, everyone gets to see the film; some have a better experience than others. The analogy is not an exact comparison to JAWS versus Window-Eyes, for example, because only a few of the problems arise because Window-Eyes is broken. Most differences are quirks, and you can't use the analogy of upgrading like you can with browsers. Although WE bugs me frequently, I do acknowledge that it is a quality piece of software. However, I think the analogy illustrates my two main points: 1. we are not excluding anyone. I am talking about relatively fine differences in user experience... tweaking; optimising. 2. whatever you do in these cases, someone will lose out a little You seem to be saying we should optimize for no screen reader over another but I can't see, for example, how that helps me choose between two valid, alternative ways of coding a navigation bar, each of which creates issues for someone. I want perfect for everyone, but sometimes there is no perfect. Then, I have to choose, and market share is one factor I look at in making that choice.
Received on Thursday, 15 April 2004 21:42:11 UTC