Hi everyone!
I just noticed that when archiving a message in Gmail using Firefox
and NVDA, I get the following rather redundant message:
Undo link undo undo link button.
It's probably referring to the undo button which one could click in
order to undo the last command given, in this case, archive.
Also, when composing a message in Gmail, the window title was
repeatedly announced, liberally interspersed with the word "unknown,"
while I was trying to find a contact in the auto-suggestions with the
arrow keys. This was seriously slowing me down.
This made me wonder just how much redundancy in speech we are
currently getting from screen readers and to what extent this might
hamper our efficiency. So I thought I'd ask around if anyone knows of
any actual studies conducted on this subject. Is there such a field as
screen reader user experience design? I consider myself moderately
knowledgeable in the area of screen readers but I haven't found it
yet.
Are the current designs based on scientific principles, or on wild
guesses as to what people need, based on personal experience of power
users?
Best,
Felix