Screen reader compatibility

I just finished a bug report with Adobe last week on what is and is not working when I test with JAWS - see what I learned at this thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/6251450#6251450

Hope this helps. As far as what works:

1. JAWS reads your slide notes first with accessibility activated. If you put your slide content in the notes section, along with any instructions you need to provide on how to access any interactivity (shortcut keys, button names, etc.) found in the slide, then you've provided a map for accessibility to your sight impaired users before they even have to begin tabbing or arrowing around the page. Basically, you're providing the same information that would be found in a well designed and executed .pdf text equivalent accessibility document, but giving the user a chance to move navigate through your presentation.

2. Make sure that seamless tabbing is turned OFF. There CANNOT be a checkmark in the seamless tabbing box on publish settings.

3. If you're using and LMS: Each LMS has it's own quirks. If you can publish directly to a sandbox and test your layouts before your design and develop a project, you will have a much better understanding of what you can and can't do in their environment. If you don't have access to the LMS to sandbox your ideas, try them out on SCORM Cloud using a free account. The Cloud is the "gold standard" for SCORM compliance, and you can test accessibility of your project quickly and easily.

4. Internet Explorer is, without a doubt, the weakest accessibility support browser I have tested on. Several LMS providers (Blackboard Learn, for one) are now telling their customers that their systems work best with Firefox, Chrome, etc, and that IE is not recommended. If you're stuck providing for the IE platform, you're accessible items will drop off, but that's based on the combination of IE and whatever LMS you're using.

Good luck! Let me know what you learn - I'll keep posting what stumble across in my accessibility attempts as well.

Justenuf

Captivate has quite a lot of support for accessibility and screen readers such as JAWS.  You need to look into the Help topics about how to set up this area.  It's not 100% perfect, and there are some flaws, but it's better than most tools (in my opinion).