RE: JAWS assistance

Hi Virginia

The problems you describe do relate to a specific screen reader. The users
of different screen readers are likely to have the same experiences when
using the site.

Last year, a couple of colleagues and I did a bit of research with a group
of screen reader users. In part the research looked at the use of structural
labels and skip links. The results are in a paper which you might find
interesting http://www.usability.com.au/resources/source-order.cfm


Regards
Roger

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
Behalf Of Virginia Shedden
Sent: Friday, 25 August 2006 8:14 AM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: JAWS assistance



Hi All

We recently conducted a round of usability testing for a client and included
a small sample of motor and vision impaired persons to
identify potential accessibility issues.

We identified the following issues with the site when using JAWS: 1. The
significant use of links throughout the website was tedious; 2.
The skip to content link not was not functioning; 3. The lists encountered
(e.g. the bulleted points) were not identified by JAWS;
and 4.  Participants had a tendency to overlook the Left Navigation headings
(which were important to the overall navigation of the site)
because they habitually avoided links and skipped to the main content areas.

We were wondering whether these types of issues are specific to JAWS, or
could be generalised to other screen reading software (e.g. Windows
Eyes)?

I would greatly appreciate your expertise on this matter.

Best regards

Virginia

Received on Thursday, 24 August 2006 23:23:41 UTC