Hi again Joe,
Abstractly yes, but the question was specifically 508-compliance. As a practical matter that depends on what assistive technology is the benchmark for sections 1194.22 l and n.
Oh I didn't know they were using benchmarks.
The spec takes a very broad definition for assistive technology, namely:
Any item, piece of equipment, or system, whether acquired commercially,
modified, or customized, that is commonly used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities
Just out of curiosity: does this cover free software ?
So it really isn't possible to test against that level of abstraction and declare one's code compliant. Certainly not with anything like the concreteness found in the HTML or XHTML specs.
I was thinking to things like WCAG, actually.
Having worked with (broadcast) radio reading services back in the 90's, I am familiar with the older generations of screenreaders, but Sébastien perhaps you can tell us what software is "commonly used" today?
Well... concerning operating systems and other non-dedicated programs, I' say that the usage ratios for the visually impaired are similar to those for sighted persons, that is a lot of Windows users, some using Mac OS, and other, a minority, using LInux, either in text mode or in graphical mode. Those on Windows use programs such as Jaws, Window-Eyes, NVDA etc. On Mac OS X it's VoiceOver which is used. On Linux, there is brltty and a few others that mainly deal with braille in text mode, speakup and a few others which are more speech-oriented, and orca that gives access to the graphical desktop. One other thing is that visually impaired users sometimes like using text-mode browsers such as lynx. Unfortunately, these browsers often have no Javascript support, or a very little, experimental and untested one.
Regarding javascript, I don't think that is a dealbreaker per se. For example, our use of YUI to make drop-down buttons out of lists or links should be compliant.
Well... I experienced some problems when I wanted to add some user categories in Koha's admin interface. I had to modify the templates to be able to use the feature -- I'm using lynx. Best wishes, Sébastien.