508 compliance and Captivate

Misa, I think I know what the problem is (was). In the slide properties, the text "On Enter" does not mean when the Enter button is pressed, it means upon entering the slide. So if you change the dropdown under "On Enter" to "Play Audio" and assign an audio file, the audio file will play when you enter the slide. On Exit works the same way only as you leave the slide. For accessibility, the user would have to focus on a button/object by tabbing to it then pressing Enter.

Hope this helps or at least clears up some of the misunderstanding.

I am completing my training product using Captivate 6.6 and have found that all after the first embedded link on any given slide, I cannot assign the "Enter" key to launch the hyperlink.  Since I am restricted to having the "Enter" launch every link ON TAB FOCUS and therefore am not allowed to assign other "hot keys" to launch each separate link, my project fails 508 compliance check.  I am using smart shapes as hyperlinks, and enabling them as buttons within the slide.  I'm good if there's only one button per slide because I can assign the "Enter" as a shortcut to launch the button.  If however I have yet one more smart shape on the same slide as a link to another site I cannot assign "Enter" as the shortcut key because it will only launch the first link.  Since hyperlinks have to launch using the "Enter" key or the project fails how do I get around this problem?  Does Captivate7 fix this or am I missing something that will make my Captivate 6.6 project function appropriately?  Thanks for any insights.

The standard "tab/enter" sequence works great with any standard button type in Captivate in MOST industry standard LMSs. Just label your buttons in the accessibility text areas and you're good to go without any extensive keyboard shortcuts. The drawback is these buttons can't be placed on your master slide, but have to be pasted to every slide in your lesson.

The play bar navigation keys work perfectly well if all you're doing is a linear course without attempting to disable a button during any slide. Standard "tab/enter" sequencing works, and you don't even have to label the play bar, as the name, role and state are preprogrammed.

As far as Smart Shape buttons, there's a flaw that makes 508 compliance doubtful. I'm currently waiting (for about a week at this point) to hear from Adobe Tech Support regarding a show-stopper flaw with Smart Shape buttons using the JAWS 14 reader.  JAWS reads an unlabeled and unassigned "ghost button" next to every labeled and active Smart Shape button you create, even though those buttons do not exist on the page - which is really confusing.

At this point, the play bar and/or individual navigation buttons seem the only way to go to pass 508.

Justenuf

You can add a short cut key to any interactive object (smart shapes as buttons, buttons and click boxes, text entry boxes). Be careful of click boxes because you can't use tabbable order with them. Every slide has a tabbable order button that you can use to determine the order you want the objects to be tabbed in. When the learner clicks that tab on their keyboard, they then either click the Enter key or the space bar to make whatever the action you have attached to the object happen (such as go to a weblink, jump to another slide etc). Every object on the slide (and the slide itself) has an accessiblity box, you can click on that and add your prompts there. Their text reader will read this to them.

Here is the Adobe best practices user guide: http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/captivate/best-practices.html

Additionally, I have some blog posts on using closed captions (scrolling) http://www.captivatecrazy.com