Acceptable to require older screen readers?
I had someone ask me this question: How much of an inconvenience it is to ask a user to go from one version of JAWS to another. If, for instance, a person is generally uses JAWS 9 for most of their day-to-day PC activity but they are required to run JAWS 7.1 for a certain application?”
In other words, is it a problem for users to have to go back and forth from one version to another? Is this a common request? Do users typically have more than one version of jaws that they use?
This is definitely a usability question, along with a practicality one.
It is possible to multiple versions of JAWS installed, as long as they support the operating system (OS).
For example JAWS 7.1 does not support Vista, so a user on Windows Vista needs to use 8.0 or later.
JAWS currently is designed to have side by side installations, so you can have JAWS 7, 8, etc. on a system. (You do have to install earlier ones first.)
Truth is there are shared components which always are updated to the latest. So if you have installed 7.1, 8.0 and 9.0, even when you switch to 7.1 you have a bit of 9.0 running. So the performance could be affected. While it is tempting to say “We only support JAWS 7.1,” users will upgrade ether by choice or necessity, and so even if the product is not supporting JAWS later version, it still needs to be tested with the older version with the later one installed on that machine to ensure the new shared components have not broken something that was previously being counted on as working.
Back to the question. Users can switch between versions. It is definitely a nuisance in my view to have to switch screen readers or screen reader versions to get support for a specific app. And a user who is multi-tasking between two apps where previous version works well in one and current version works far better in the other, it can really hurt productivity and be frustrating.
While I do not know if it is a common “request” that users use older and newer versions, it unfortunately is a common experience. There are some users who in fact keep two or three different screen readers to access apps depending on their needs.
Since the question was framed specifically around JAWS, I will add the following. I’d recommend a rule of thumb to not let any specific JAWS support to get more than one release behind. For example, 7.1 is getting old, it does not support Vista, and currently the shipping release is 9.0 with 10.0 in beta. In addition, as mentioned previously, when requiring an older version of JAWS for a product, ensure that the feature still works when a newer version is also installed on the system as there are shared components that will be updated to the latest version.
And of course, whenever possible create an accessible product that does not require a specific screen reader, or worse yet a specific version of a specific screen reader.