User testing with people with disabilities with assistive technologies

At AccessibilityOz we have a policy to test with users with a disability as much as possible – more than 20 percent of our staff have a disability of some sort.

Why test with users

User testing with people with disabilities is strongly recommended as it can bring an alternative view of the accessibility of a web site. User testing can often be a way of determining how important certain errors are, and what needs to be fixed first.

Assistive technology testing can be conducted by people with disabilities.

Assistive technology testing

Using common tasks, the following assistive technologies can be tested:

• Screen reader: JAWS (person with a severe vision impairment)
• Screen reader: NVDA (person with a severe vision impairment)
• Magnifier: ZoomText (person with a moderate vision impairment)
• Speech recognition: Dragon Naturally Speaking (person with a physical impairment)
• Speech recognition: Windows Speech Recognition (person with a cognitive impairment)

A variety of other user testing can be conducted on request.