Comments on: Configuring Your Machine For Testing With A Screen Reader

By: Accessibilità » Blog Archive » Uno Screen Reader per i test

Accessibilità » Blog Archive » Uno Screen Reader per i test — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:50:21 +0000

[...] Configuring your machine for testing with a screen reader [...]

By: Ultraviolet Design Blog : More Accessible User Interfaces with ARIA

Ultraviolet Design Blog : More Accessible User Interfaces with ARIA — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:53:00 +0000

[...] YUI Configuring screen readers [...]

By: protofunc() » Wai-Aria Widget-Entwicklung mit Accessibility Probe/Inspect am Beispiel einer custom Select-Drop-Down-Box

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:11:10 +0000

[...] mehr als einem Browser getestet werden. Todd Kloots hat hierzu im YUI-Blog einige Informationen zum Installieren und Konfigurieren von Screenreadern für Entwickler zusammengestellt. Marco Zehe gibt weitere Informationen zum Testen mit [...]

By: ARIA Made Easier With YUI 3 » Yahoo! User Interface Blog

ARIA Made Easier With YUI 3 » Yahoo! User Interface Blog — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:24:49 +0000

[...] Configuring Your Machine For Testing With A Screen Reader [...]

By: Mozilla Webdev » Blog Archive » Improving Accessibility Through ARIA

Mozilla Webdev » Blog Archive » Improving Accessibility Through ARIA — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:43:50 +0000

[...] Setting up a screen reader [...]

By: Web Design Creatives

Web Design Creatives — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:58:28 +0000

We have been testing the websites using JAWS from a long time. Just to make sure we don’t miss anything important as far as accessibility in concerned. This is very helpful information which will surely add some more gems :-) thanks!

By: Ki

Ki — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:50:30 +0000

Unfortunately, there seems to be no usable virtual machine software for PowerPC Mac computers. (Yes, there are still millions out there!)

By: Victor Tsaran

Victor Tsaran — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:09:06 +0000

It is important to remember that the primary goal of a screen reader is not to be a testing or debugging tool but to allow visually impaired users interact with a computer. "users" is an important keyword in this context because, while it is possible to automate certain user tasks, it is nearly impossible to automate the way a visually impaired user may decide to interact with a web site (or a widget) that was not designed with them in mind. Testing with screen readers is not always easy but so is not testing your code with various browsers on various operating systems. In my experience, VMWare Fusion on the Mac seems to be the friendliest to screen readers. See An Introduction to Screen Readers that we did a while ago for a demo of how screen readers are used on the web.

By: Robert Stackhouse

Robert Stackhouse — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:35:04 +0000

I’m with Madness, I think if someone really wanted to promote the usage of WAI-ARIA by developers, they’d make it way easier to test in screen readers. Second to that would be finding a way to automate screen reader testing (good luck with that though).

Is there a way to install and programmatically configure these things (like using an MSI)? That would probably violate the EULA of some of the screen readers though since they are proprietary software.

By: Rich Schwerdtfeger

Rich Schwerdtfeger — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:38:09 +0000

Hi Todd,

I would also recommend disabling graphics hooking. This is especially important when running the JAWS screen reader in parallels – they totally mess up your screen. I have a JAWS configuration file and batch file around that allows you to run without installing the graphics engine hooks. Browser access is through engineered accessibility APIs.

Rich