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Screen Reader User Survey #9 Results

• The famous WebAIM survey this year had 1568 responses, mostly from North America and Europe, with a pretty even age split. 92.3% of respondents said they have a disability, almost 80% of which was blindness.
• 57.5% of respondents class themselves as “advanced” screen reader users, versus 37.4% “intermediate” and 5.1% “beginner”. This roughly correlates with their self-assessed levels of “Internet Proficiency”.
• JAWS is the primary screen reader for over half of respondents, followed by NVDA on around 30%. VoiceOver counts for just 6.5%. This is a decline for NVDA and VoiceOver compared to previous years. Windows Narrator is the primary reader of less than 1% of respondents, but is “commonly used” by 41% of them, compared to 30% in 2019.
• Chrome is the browser of choice for 53.6% of respondents, followed by Edge at 18.4% and Firefox at 16.5%. Chrome and Edge usage has increased notably. JAWS with Chrome is by far the most common screen reader & browser combination, at 32.5%. 91.1% of respondents use Windows, vs 6.5% on Mac.
• 72% use iOS mobile devices, vs 25.8% on Android. This corresponds roughly with mobile screen reader usage of 71.5% on VoiceOver and 29.1% on TalkBack, and with choice of browser (Safari: 61.6%, Chrome: 24.2%).
• 99.4% of respondents have JavaScript enabled.
• Almost two thirds of screen readers report that they are “very satisfied” with their primary screen reader, and almost a third “somewhat satisfied”.
• When asked how often they use “skip links” when available, 17.5% said “Always”, 15% said “Often”, 29.7% said “Sometimes”, 22.7% said “Seldom” and 15% said “Never”. Whilst very mixed results, these are largely unchanged from the 2017 survey.
• Around 39% say web content has become more accessible this year, but around 42% say there has been no change, and 18.5% say content has become less accessible.
• The majority of screen reader users navigate pages by working through the headings first. About 85% of users find the use of heading levels either very useful or somewhat useful.

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