Hello All,

    I have a been searching around for a viable solution to this subject for a while and I have yet to find one. Any ideas?

I doubt if there is a solution and why would you care?

NC...

I may be taking your statement the wrong way, but a vast majority of my users use software such as JAWS and Windows EYE because they are blind so I care a lot about what technology they are using in conjuction with my site! I think some one that is an MS MVP would appreciate that! The main reason I want to know is what technology they are using is b/c I want to turn off certain functionality to make the site more accomidating for them or redirect them to a different version of the site all together! Hope this helps you understand why I am researching this topic any suggestions are appreciated!

 >I have a been searching around for a viable solution to this subject for a while and I have yet to find one. Any ideas?

The first step is ensure that the site produces valid XHTML code by using the W3C tests at http://validator.w3.org/

(this incidentally will reduce radically the number of cross-browser problems)

I suggest you also go to http://www.rnib.co.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/code/public_rnib008789.hcsp and look at the WCAG guidelines

If you have not yet migrated to VS2005/VS2008 and used the GridView instead of the datagrid, do so as the former produces standard <th>...</th> for the headr cells.

Look at repeating your error messages into the caption bar - a screen reader user will now hear the message at the start of the screen readout.

Now as to detecting if a user is using a screen reader, this is AFAIK impossible as the screen reader sites behind the browser and does not modify the browser. It would be a good idea if JAWS at al did modify the browser properties in a way you could pick up.

Hello TATWORTH,

That was a very good post for those who are not aware of some of the accessibility issues with web sites and one thing I would add would be that there are also certain laws out there that regulate some developers and what they must do to make it legally accessible!

Another thing I would like to add for future readers it is better in most cases as a best practice to also use div tags combined with Cascading Style Sheets to format the sites rather than using tables (this is a pet peeve of mine)

now back to the screen reader subject I have seen only one solution out there thus far for my initial question but I don't really consider it a viable solution. There is a peace of technology out there call flashaid but I have not really dug into it as yet b/c I was hoping there was something built-in the javascript / browser model for the detecting much like there is for finding out what browser the user is using

i.e.

BrowserDetect.Browser

but I guess if you think about the logical operation JAWS reads the browser it does not write to the browser that is the host servers job!

Thanks for the post TATWORTH

 p.s. for a good list of .NET Controls and there accessibility compatibility (say that 10 times fast) check this site out

 >I would add would be that there are also certain laws out there that regulate some developers and what they must do to make it legally accessible!

You are quite correct. My understanding is that there is a legal requirement to do this in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, but there are probably a lot more countries where this is required.

One problem that ASP.NET developers face is that while bodies like RNIB and W3C give out excellent advice at the rendered HTML level, there seems to be little or no advice specific to ASP.NET.

In connection with some work that was vetted by the RNIB's accessibilty testers, I have been advised that tables for layout are not necessarily a barrier to accessibility. On future projects I will certainly explore using CSS.

shane.gibson@rsc.state.oh.us:

I may be taking your statement the wrong way, but a vast majority of my users use software such as JAWS and Windows EYE because they are blind so I care a lot about what technology they are using in conjuction with my site! I think some one that is an MS MVP would appreciate that! The main reason I want to know is what technology they are using is b/c I want to turn off certain functionality to make the site more accomidating for them or redirect them to a different version of the site all together! Hope this helps you understand why I am researching this topic any suggestions are appreciated!

Not quite possible. 

 One further thought concerning accessibility - there is a need for an ASP.NET version of the W3C XHTML tests which are Perl/Apache centered. I say there is a need as:

• While the W3C tests are available as a web service, there a limit of 1 tests per second.
• There are systems where accessibility is important but the pages may not be transmitted across the internet to the W3C's server.