WebAIM publishes results of survey on accessibility

WebAIM has just published the initial results of its January 2009 survey of people who use screen readers and other forms of assistive technology (AT). Find the WebAIM survey's initial results here.

I have barely looked at this information, but a few points do jump out at me:

• To some extent, the data may indicate what users of AT know about the options available in their software. (If you custom design access keys for your page, new users of AT will use them a lot more frequently than will expert users of AT. Is it because they learn more about the access keys built into AT as they use it more?)
• To some extent, the data indicate the extent to which users of AT have learned to cope with poor design. (Only 18 percent look for the word "Search" to locate the site search function. By contrast, 25 percent jump to the first text/edit field on the page — which isn't always the search function — and 36 percent jump to the first form element — which, again, isn't always the search function. Have they learned that looking for a label that says "Search" is futile?)
• Perhaps of greatest interest to the Drupal Accessibility group, only 13 percent of people who use AT consider repeated links to be very difficult. ("Repeated links" are links that contain the same text but go to different destinations.)
• To some extent, the data reinforce the idea that it is very important to use headings to show the structure of a page. (Overall, 76 percent use headings to navigate within a page. Among beginners, only 55 percent do so. Among those who have used AT the longest, 91 percent do so. Proper heading structure goes a long way toward achieving accessibility.)
• Sometimes those of us who are not disabled and argue at length over the right thing to do should just shut up and ask the audience or, barring that, do the best we can. (I won't go into details, but for extreme cases see the preferences with respect to handling several different kinds of images.)
• Anyone who feels they absolutely must use Flash should be aware of the difficulties Flash presents for people who must use AT.

There is quite a bit more in WebAIM's presentation of these survey results. WebAIM promises to make a more complete analysis available soon.