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by oh_boy 2645 days ago
Use aXe for automated tests and test everything manually with JAWS + Firefox (most popular screen reader Desktop combination) and iOS VoiceOver (most troubling mobile issues in my experience).

If you can afford in your project, use a external service that tests with people with different disabilities.
1 comments
throwaway857384 2645 days ago
JAWS + IE is the most popular combination [1]

[1] https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey7/#browsercomb...

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jscholes 2644 days ago
> JAWS + IE is the most popular combination

It's worth keeping a few points in mind when reading these results:

1. The survey was carried out in October 2017. Things can and do move quite rapidly in this area, especially given the increased number of users who will be running Windows 10 now who may not have been back then.

2. IE won't be around forever, and once the accessibility of Microsoft Edge improves (which is likely to happen pretty soon when they adopt Chromium), IE will become less and less relevant.

3. NVDA with Firefox is a much more common combination than JAWS with Firefox, primarily because the NVDA developers recommend it. Freedom Scientific (makers of JAWS) have historically pushed IE perhaps more than other browsers, so it will be interesting to see how that changes as Edge becomes more usable.

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oh_boy 2639 days ago
IE is mostly used here because it works best with the screenreaders, not because it's preinstalled or other common reasons. When I test with IE, and then with Firefox, I notice subtle things with big impact working better in IE e.g. I found that screenreaders are particular better with multilingual content on IE. I can't recall the exact screenreader/browser combo, but on IE, I got proper support for different voices for different languages when an element other than the HTML element had a lang attribute.
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throwaway857384 2644 days ago
My only comments to that would be WebAim is the highest authority on accessibility.

I'm well aware that these combinations will change over time.

The biggest thing is that JAWS costs a lot of money, so people buy, get used to it, and stick with their setup.

I tend to say, 'The only people who still use IE have no choice" or something like that.

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jscholes 2644 days ago
> WebAim is the highest authority on accessibility.

I'm not sure that's strictly true nor measurable, or really matters in this case when we're discussing a survey filled out by users.

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oh_boy 2639 days ago
You're right. Had it wrong in my head.
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