Updated 15.2.2025 to better reflect points I was trying to made with the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we start learning about accessibility we may get a feeling that it is mainly for screen reader users. And when we give it a bit of thought it’s kind of obvious that Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) include a lot of focus on screen readers<\/strong> and perhaps not enough focus on other assistive technologies – it seems that they perhaps overly rely on the non-normative part of the Understanding documents (opens in new window)<\/a> when doing so. My guess is that people just miss the warning “Informative explanations, not required to meet WCAG<\/strong>” and may even think that understanding documents are actually WCAG (normative).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cognitive accessibility is even less represented<\/strong>. There seems to be quite a logical situation when we consider how different we – the people – are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s way easier to define guidelines that can be interpreted by technology when we compare it to the diversity of the human experience (from sensory to cognition and beyond). I guess this may also be the reason for some people to give up on accessibility<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly it’s also easier to write test rules for the guidelines that can be interpreted directly by technology. For example – screen reader needs to get the info about the label that is connected to an input field. Or screen reader needs status message when we add an item into shopping cart without the move of focus. These are obvious – code reflects design and interaction and screen reader interprets the underlying code<\/strong> (with help of accessibility tree and sometimes beyond).<\/p>\n\n\n\n That explains a bit, but let us check approximate numbers – what part of guidelines are dedicated fully or partially to screen readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we measure we need to first define how we will do it. I decided to count all WCAG 2.2 success criteria (opens in new window)<\/a> that are solely dedicated to screen readers, but that would not be enough, so I also added criteria that are partially including screen readers (not based solely on the WCAG, but also on the non-normative understanding documents).<\/p>\n\n\n\nMapping screen reader to the guidelines<\/h2>\n\n\n\n