assistive-technology

assistive technology

This page is for documenting currently known accessibility assistive technologies (implementations) that are being used in the wild for the purpose of testing any particular microformats and microformats techniques to determine their impact on assistive technologies.

What to add

Only accessible assistive technologies

Rather than duplicating lists elsewhere on the Web (e.g. Wikipedia's Comparison of screen readers), please only add assistive technologies that you, or someone you know (such as a user of an assistive technology that you are in touch with) has access to for testing purposes. This will help keep the testing "real world" on an ongoing basis, because if no one has access to an assistive technology, then testing it is an unreasonable (purely theoretical) expectation.

Please provide

When adding an assistive technology to the list(s) below, please provide:

• Your name / name of person who has access to the assistive technology for testing purposes
• Name of assistive technology
• URL to home page for the technology, and URL(s) to purchase if available
• version number
• when published/released
• estimated number of users if known (even rough estimates are ok), along with date of estimate (ideally with a citation).

Note their bugs too

In addition, by keep tracking of various different assistive technologies, their versions, their bugs/shortcomings, and any non-standards-compliant behavior, especially when such behavior interferes with microformats on the page, we can focus our efforts on suggesting improvements for them accordingly.

Screen Readers

General marketshare numbers for screen readers:

• 2003 USA: JAWS 65%, GW-Micro Window-Eyes 35%. According to a study of screen reader use published in December 2003, a spokesperson for the US National Federation of the Blind estimated that in the USA, JAWS had 65% of the screen reader market and GW-Micro Window-Eyes had 35%; also JAWS was the software most commonly used by U.S. federal workers.

JAWS

Publisher: Freedom Scientific Total users as of 2002: "There are approximately 80,000 registered users of JAWS" - Chris Hofstader of Freedom Scientific. Presumably world-wide users of any version of JAWS.

Testing possibilities

You can download demo versions of JAWS that are limited to run for about half an hour per Windows session. Unfortunately, Freedom Scientific considers testing web standards support in JAWS demos to be a breach of its EULA. Alternative, you could submit a test-case to end users at one of the JAWS mailing lists.

Documentation

• Official manuals.
• Official tutorial about surfing the web with JAWS.

Extensibility

JAWS is scriptable, and some scripts attempt to improve web access, such as Jamal Mazrui's HomerKit.

Release notes

• JAWS 8 (November 2006).
• JAWS 7.10 (June 2006).
• JAWS 7 (October 2005). Perhaps the most commonly used version of JAWS).
• JAWS 6.2. Seemingly the last version of JAWS adapted for use in China (see also English summary).
• JAWS 6.1.
• JAWS 6 (2005). Many JAWS-related mailing list correspondents use a version of 6.
• JAWS 5.1 (2004).
• JAWS 5 (2004). A few correspondents use 5 or earlier.
• JAWS 4.51 This is the earliest version recently spotted on JAWS-related mailing lists.

GW Micro Window-Eyes

Test possibilities

Volunteer testers: Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis (webdev not user).

Like Freedom Scientific, GW-Micro offer an otherwise fully-functional demo of their latest release which can only be run for about half an hour per Windows session. Unlike Freedom Scientific, GW-Micro encourage developers to test with the demo. You can also download the demo for an earlier version, 5.5, from Beyond Sight.

Alternatively, you could submit a test-case to one of the Window-Eyes users' mailing lists, as suggested by GW-Micro themselves.

Extensibility

Window-Eyes "set files" map functionality to applications.

Documentation

• Official manual.
• Window-Eyes and Firefox Extensions.
• Window-Eyes and ActiveX.
• MP3 tutorials.
• Information for web developers.

Release Notes

• Release notes for most versions.

MicroPower Virtual Vision

Brazilian screen reader.

Userbase

The Yahoo! Group devoted to Virtual Vision has 226 members (as of 2007-05-01).

Testing possibilites

Submit a testcase to the Virtual Vision mailing list.

Release notes

• Virtual Vision 5.5

PC-Talker

Japanese screen reader.

Userbase

Along with 95 Reader, PC-Talker is more commonly used than the Japanese edition of JAWS, according to Takayuki Watanabe and Masahiro Umegaki, Capability Survey of Japanese User Agents and Its Impact on Web Accessibility (2006) (PDF).

Test possibilities

Probably the best bet would be to contact Watanabe.

Documentation

• Kochi System Development PC-Talker

95 Reader

Japanese screen reader.

Userbase

Along with PC-Talker, 95 Reader is more commonly used than the Japanese edition of JAWS, according to Takayuki Watanabe and Masahiro Umegaki, Capability Survey of Japanese User Agents and Its Impact on Web Accessibility (2006) (PDF).

Test possibilities

Probably the best bet would be to contact Watanabe.

Documentation

• 95 Reader

See Also

• accessibility
• assistive-technology-abbr-results