Visually impaired

Survey of Preferences of Screen Readers Users
http://www.webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/

Teaching Internet skills to pupils with a severe visual impairment
Rob Jones The Royal School for the Blind, Craigmillar Park, Edinburgh EH 16 5NA, Scotland, rob.jones@royalblindschool.org.uk
This article gives an account of the planning, design, implementation and evaluation within a specialist school for blind and partially-sighted pupils of a teaching programme to enable them to access and use the Web as part of the National ICT curriculum. An analysis was made of the specific core skills required by visually impaired students for the Searching and Researching Strand of the Guidelines. The problems encountered by the teacher-designer and pupils with different degrees of residual vision are described, and an assessment is offered of the impact and success of the teaching programme.
British Journal of Visual Impairment, Vol. 22, No. 3, 84-88 (2004) DOI: 10.1177/0264619604050043
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ808139&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ808139  

USABILITY STUDY WITH USERS WITH DISABILITIES
Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users with Disabilities Design Guidelines for Websites and Intranets Based on Usability Studies with People Using Assistive Technology
By: Kara Pernice and Jakob Nielsen
Stanford Online Accessibility Program, Stanford University (2001)
To derive the usability guidelines in this report, we conducted a series of usability tests of several different websites. In total, 104 people participated in the evaluations, including 84 users with disabilities and 20 users without disabilities who served as a control group. We conducted a qualitative study with 44 users, including 31 in the United States and 13 in Japan. Of these users, 35 had visual impairments and 9 had motor skill impairments.  The web sites included corporate, high-tech, government, e-commerce, and nonprofit sites. We also conducted a quantitative study in the U.S. to measure the magnitude of usability problems for users with disabilities compared to non-disabled users. The quantitative study had 60 participants, including 20 users with low vision, 20 users with no vision, and a control group of 20 sighted users.
http://soap.stanford.edu/show.php?contentid=85

ICT-related skills and needs of blind and visually impaired people
Carolina van Puffelen
University of Twente, Dpt. of Technical & Professional Communication, The Netherlandsm.
c.j.vanpuffelen@utwente.nl
This study focuses on the relationship between the ICT-related training offered to blind and visually impaired people and their actual, self-reported and demonstrated, competencies for online activities and information processing. The findings of the study can shed light on how people with severe visual disabilities are prepared to access the web for educational, institutional and social participation. The study also gives insight in the validity of instruments to measure ICT-linked skills for the target group and creates an empirical foundation forimprovements of ICT-related training. The first phase of the study investigated how blindand visually impaired people perceive their participation in society through ICT. Anextensive interview showed how this audience perceives the frequency and quality of their Internet use (or absence thereof) and how they acquired these skills.
Sigaaccess Newsletter, Issue 93, Jan 2009
http://www.sigaccess.org/community/newsletter/january_2009/jan09_8.pdf