The document summarizes the results of a survey conducted by Birkir R. Gunnarsson from Blindrafelagid (the Icelandic Organization of the Visually Impaired) and Hinni Hreinsson from the Stockholm Low Vision Center on how screen reader users navigate web pages. The survey found that while many users know how to use headings and table navigation, only about a third are familiar with landmarks. Most learn navigation techniques independently rather than through formal training. The authors propose creating an online guide to help screen reader users better understand navigation features and techniques.

1. The Stockholm Low Vision Center
Stockholm County Council
WCAG guidelines -
What about the
Users?
Birkir R. Gunnarsson, Blindrafelagid; The Icelandic
Organization of the Visually Impaired
@birkir_gun
Hinni Hreinsson,
The Stockholm Low Vision Center
@hm_hreinsson
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2. Blindrafelagid, Icelandic
organization of the visually
impaired (BIOVI)
• BIOVI is a human rights organization
• Fights for independent and responsible living conditions for
visually impaired people
• Fights for their secured equal rights and opportunities to
responsible, active and recognized participation in all
sectors of our community
• Similar to the National Federation of the Blind in the US
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3. Stockholm Low Vision Center
• Part of a public medical service of Stockholm County,
population 2.1 million
• Workforce: 80 staff in 5 teams
• Has a specialized computer team that works with users of
all ages
• The computer team has an annual average of 2000 visits
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4. Why the two of us?
• Worked together at the Iceland National Institute for the
Blind 2009/2012
• Birkir on web accessibility audits, making development
recommendations
• Hinni training users on A.T., amongst other ventures
• Lots of discussions between us revealed that best practices
recommendations did not always make it to A.T. trainers
and end users
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5. Why this project?
• Delivering web content requires 4 "players"
• A website that is accessible
• Browsers that render the content and build the Document
Object Model (DOM)
• Assistive Technology that transforms content from the
browser's DOM into suitable user interface
• And a user who interacts with the Assistive Technology and
reads the content
• Are users aware that their screen reader can help them
easily navigate within a well structured webpage?
• We felt this merited further study
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6. Plans for the survey
• We suspected a lot of users were not aware of the role of
headings or landmarks and that they did not take
advantage of their table navigation hotkeys
• If this was the case, our plan was to investigate the current
navigation strategies of screen reader users
• Then use the information from the survey to create a
guide, vendor neutral, which could explain how you can use
the screen reader to effectively read web pages
• Such a guide could benefit users at various stages of SR
competence
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7. Interesting facts from the
2012 WebAIM screen reader
survey
• Survey of 1700 screen reader users
• 64.2% of screen reader users consider themselves
advanced Internet users, only 2.2% consider themselves
beginners
• Users keep their screen readers up to date
• 40.5% of users say they navigate by landmarks often or
whenever they are present on a website
• Yet only 2.4% of users say they start with landmarks when
exploring a large webpage
• Most people (60.8%) use headings when doing so
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8. Our Survey
• Posted a survey of 9 questions through Survey Monkey
• We asked about various issues regarding web page
navigation and SR usage
• Received 342 responses
• Thanks to GW Micro, Flying Blind, Jennifer Sutton and
others who helped spread the word via mailing lists and
Twitter
• The survey, results and analysis will be made available
online
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9. Screen reader usage and
training
• Many users run multiple screen readers
• Most users have a screen reader that is up-to-date enough
to support landmarks
• Only 21% of users received formal training on browsing
with a screen reader
• Close to 80% use their SR webpage summary feature
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10. Familiarity with landmarks,
headings and table navigation
• About a third of the respondents indicated that they are
familiar with and use landmarks for webpage navigation,
the rest either sent in blank responses or indicated they
were not sure what landmarks are
• About 60% of respondents are familiar with headings and
use them for page navigation
• 61% of respondents know of, and use, their SR's table
navigation hot keys to browse tables on websites
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11. Examples of responses to the
landmark question:
• Q: Do you know what "Landmarks" mean, and how do you
detect the presence of, and skip between, landmarks on a
webpage?
• Examples of the responses we received:
– No
– I don't really know what they mean, I hear JAWS refer to them but
they don't seem useful
– I've heard them mentioned, but I don't know what they are or how to
use them
– Not exactly
– I have no idea what a landmark is. I guess I don't surf the web very
much
– They are a feature, but I do not know how they look on a web page. I
hear the announcement and know they are related to a new way to
make the web accessible. I have not used the hotkey for them.
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12. Web page exploration
strategies
• Users can choose more than one answer, therefore results
add up to more than 100%
• 80% of users use tab and arrow keys to explore page
• 80% of users use headings for page exploration
• 44% of users bring up a list of all links on the page in a list
box (many SRs offer this)
• 31% explore by landmarks
• 30% use their SR page summary feature
• 20% of users use other methods
• 11% explore by "new element" (jump to the first
occurrence of a different element, most SR's offer this)
• 8% of users use TAB and arrow keys exclusively
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13. Notable results:
• Users mostly learn to browse with a screen reader by
themselves, little formalized training
• About 2/3 of users know how to navigate a table and use
headings
• About 1/3 of users is familiar with landmarks and their use
• A large part of the user base still relies heavily on TAB and
arrow keys to navigate a webpage
• Users utilize the page description element of screen readers
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14. Suggestions for improvements
• The survey indicates we can all do a few things to help
users along:
• Web page developers: Use markup clearly and efficiently
• W3C standards: Consider a set of more clearly specified
landmarks
• SR vendors: Include landmarks in web page summary
features (not all major SRs do this even if they support
landmark navigation)
• A.T. instructors: Can we reach out to more users?
• Make sure AT instructors teach effective browsing
techniques
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15. Educational web resource:
How it would work
• Our goal is to create a simple online user manual which can
explain how SR users can effectively navigate web pages
• This manual will include relevant navigation hotkeys for all
screen readers
• The manual will be first written in English, and then
translated to Swedish and Icelandic. Hopefully we could
collaborate with those who are interested to translate the
guide into more languages
• This information would then be updated as needed
• Web pages that are WCAG certified, or have an accessibility
statement could link to this resource
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16. Thank you for your time and
interest
• The full survey results will be presented at an EASI webinar
on May 2nd, at 2pm EST. Users can sign up for the seminar
at http://easi.cc from next week on ...
We will update our progress via Twitter
Birkir and Hinni
birkir.gunnarsson@gmail.com
@birkir_gun
hm.hreinsson@gmail.com
@hm_hreinsson
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