Comments on: Setting up a screen reader test environment

By: iheni

iheni — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:17:28 +0000

Hi harsit - while not about Jaws 12 itself perhaps this article on Flash and keyboard focus across browsers will be useful. In general (aside from just Flash support) Jaws is for Windows wont work with Safari. Chrome has pretty poor support for screen readers and Opera only supports VoiceOver on Mac. Marco Zehe from Mozilla has the latest on accessibility support for Firefox 4 and will be able to answer questions about Jaws 12.

By: harshit

harshit — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:06:25 +0000

hi,
Is Flash accessible to JAWS-12 in below browsers?
ie. IE (All version)
Firefox (Versions 3.0 onwards)
Chrome
Safari
Opera

By: Gildas

Gildas — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:26:50 +0000

I want to also note that testing with a screen reader is an _interoperability_test_ and is fine to determine if the specific assistive technology (AT) you are using works for people with disabilities, but since it is assistive technology, sometimes it ‘cheats’ and provides more accessibility to the end user than is properly coded into the application or content under review. Testing with AT should not be the primary mode of inspecting for accessibility! Inspecting the platform APIs, e.g., via Inspect32 on Windows, or JavaFerret for Java applications and the document markup via Web Accessibility Toolbar and other API/Document object model inspection-based approaches should be used. Not only does this eliminate confusion in determining if the technologies under inspection are coded properly, it allows clarification if AT has defects or simply doesn’t yet support the standard APIs or interfaces available, so that can be taken back to the AT vendor for a fix or feature request. It also really helps developers who may not know AT, but who can determine if it is coded properly.

By: Rob Mills

Rob Mills — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:26:32 +0000

Some great instructions. Thank you.

I wasn’t aware you could demo Jaws for 40 mins before a reboot.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 07:15:38 +0000

Thank you for an interesting post. However, I would like to point out that the license for the free JAWS “40 minute version” is for product evaluation purposes only. The license explicitly states that development and testing is not permitted. You will have to buy a full license if you want use JAWS to test and develop.