Friday, May 11, 2012

WebAIM survey of screen reader users

If you use a screen reader, please fill out the 2012 WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey. The survey closes on May 25.

Sharing for the accessibility nerds out there... At the end of the survey, I added these comments... Let's see if I get a response!
When you report the results, I would be curious to know how you solicited people to fill in this survey. Was it just through the WebAIM email list, or did you take steps to get some kind of broad cross-section of users worldwide? In you report, will you analyze possible effects of selection bias in the results? I'm not complaining (all questionnaires have some selection bias) but I would like to hear your perspective on how much the respondents represent the whole world of web users.

Also, in a future survey, it would be interesting to use Adobe Flash Accessibility.isActive, to detect and report the respondent's use of MSAA while filling the survey. I don't advocate using this method to customize content. But I believe it could be a good analytic tool. For example, if I knew that 80% of survey respondents who said "I use a screen reader for a disability" have MSAA active, then on my own web sites this would allow me to sample my own customers to see how many have MSAA, and it would strengthen my case that yes, we do have customers using these technologies. If you are interested in adding this capability, let me know, I could donate some development time - [my email]