Using JavaScript, how can you track if a website visitor is using a screen reader?

Question

As the title suggests, how would I tell if a user is using an assistive technology, such as the Mac screen reader or JAWS, and then record that using an analytics suite, such as Google Analytics? This Google Analytics forum didn't turn up any helpful results. Would prefer a JavaScript-based answer, although something on the backend could work, too.

This is similar to my question, but a bit dated. Is there currently practices that allow what I'm after?: Is it possible to use javascript to detect if a screen reader is running on a users machine??

Answer 1

Sorry, not really. A screenreader is a separate, standalone application. In Windows, it utilises MSAA, an API provided by the operating system.

JS combined with Flash is the closest you will get: http://webaim.org/techniques/flash/media/detect.html Flash makes use of MSAA.

However, you'll get unreported users for users without Flash and users not on Windows. Screenreader users on mobile are growing rapidly http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey4/

The mac screen reader is called VoiceOver and is present on MacOSX and iOS.