Yeah, it is a problem ... blind users on Windows XP or vista is not unheard of. Vista shipped with ie7, if you can believe it. Modern screen readers are reall

Yeah, it is a problem ... blind users on Windows XP or vista is not unheard of. Vista shipped with ie7, if you can believe it. Modern screen readers are really great and standards-friendly. There are even fully featured free/open source options. The problem really is disabled users stranded on old platforms. It is very common for users with disabilities to not want to disclose their disabilities to websites. Very common to see low vision users use an independent magnifier tool rather than the browser zoom, for instance. Screen reader software is not detectable on the user's browser. So hoping to get a good count of users with disabilities visiting your site is going to be fraught with difficulties. The kindest thing you can do from a web design standpoint for people with disabilities would be to read the WCAG, understand the issues and tradeoffs, and make tweaks to the way you form your markup and styles to conform, where you are able. I learned about all this stuff while working on a public utility's website that got sued by a disabled persons' legal rights group who (legitimately) argued and won a case where they claimed the site was inaccessible to screen reader users. The site was totally atrocious, legacy Struts cruft, and we got to do a full overhaul of the UX, markup, and CSS for accessibility. I expect more of these types of lawsuits in the future, so it could be useful career-wise to be aware of this stuff. WCAG infos: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/