Screen reader/508 issues with Captivate 7

[a_warner]

We are evaluating whether we can use Capativate 7 for a client project that must be 508 compliant. When testing with Jaws 14, we are running into a number of serious obstacles:

• When published, slide accessibility text is read as if it is multiple, on-screen graphics. The word graphic is read in the middle of sentences of accessibilty text.
• Slide accessibility text is not being read in Firefox.
• Read order for on-screen text seems pretty random, and doesn't seem to alway follow either onscreen layout or the order on the timeline.
• We haven't found a  way to hide elements (specifically, purely decorative graphics) from a screen reader. Is this possible?

If anyone has run into similar problems and has solutions, I'd really appreciate any advice. I called Adobe Support a few days ago and they were going to check with their engineering team, but I have not yet received a call back.

Thanks!

[a_warner]

Just to follow up on my own post in case anyone else is having these same issues:

I contacted Adobe support again, and I was told that there are known issues with Captivate being accessed with Jaws and there aren't any workarounds to the issues I listed above. They didn't have any sort of timeline for when these issues would be resolved but said that they are looking into them. Frustrating.

[david_arbor]

Thanks for replying back on this. I'm investigating Captivate 7 and screen readers, as well, but I'm using NVDA. Do you know if it's possible for the screen reader to read text from imported PPT slides? I know the slides are flattened as images, but with Adobe Presenter, the slide text is still searchable through the side bar. I tried searching in the TOC, but that didn't work. I was able to easily get text created in Cp to read, but not with the PPT slides. If you are able to do this, does the output have to be SWF?

Thanks.

[TLCMediaDesign]

We have resorted to creating a pdf document for the visually imparied and supply a proctor for tests if needed.

Section 508 requirements applying to eLearning is difficult at best. We are even forced to make courses compliant which are intended solely for officers who cannot be visually or hearing impaired.

[Justenuf2bdangerous]

David:

you'e correct - text in an imported PPT is just part of a flattened image as far as a screen reader is concerned. The most common practice I've found regarding this is simply importing the content into your slide notes. As noted above, Captivate has an annot ying habit of inserting the word "graphic" into sentences in slide notes, buit at least the text is accessible.

Justenuf

[Justenuf2bdangerous]

We've been working off the premise that equality of content is the focus of 508 accessibility. In doing so, we've worked with our governmental clients to develop the same way AFdeveloper has done; creating a clean and compliant .pdf that delivers the content and strips all the visual cues/unnecessary graphics (use Accessing PDF Documents with Assistive Technology: A Screen Reader User’s Guide found on the Adobe Accessibility page - it's a great reference for building clean pdfs). We also place a slide at the beginning of our lesson that explains to the visually impaired how the course will be read by most screen readers if they choose to forgo the pdf provided (forewarned is forearmed, right?). One of our testers is blind and he loves the pdf versions.

As far as the random read - everything on the slide that isn't tabbable is read in z order - top left and across to bottom right. That means if you've got captions laid out in anything but a standard paragraph order, the screen reader will scan top left to bottom right and read whatever gets picked up off the y-axis first, even if it isn't what the visual cues tell you should be read first. Moving it up or down on the timeline won't change the read order on a non-interactive. The workaround would be to have the text fade in in the sequence you want it read - JAWS would read it the way it appears.

The annoying habit of JAWS to insert the word "graphic" throughout your slide notes read has been there since 5.5 at least - I have been railing at Adobe about it as well, but it simply hasn't been addressed.

As far as the decorative graphics - JAWS is going to read whatever objects it finds on the slide - unless there is a way to customize the reader itself, it's going to pick up the graphic. Going back to the idea that equality of content is the foundation of good accessibility practices, don't sweat it - the visually impaired reader will "glance" at the description in same way your sighted user just barely acknowledges the image when moving through your slides - just give it a short tag and grin and bear it.

Justenuf

[rainmansvale]

Unchecking Auto Label in the Item Accessibility and leave both the name and description blank.  This will cause JAWS to ignore the item - in my tests.  This is of course not compliant if the item you are applying this to is a meaningful piece of content but if its 'decorative graphics' it should solve your issue.

[deborahschonfeld]

Anyone know of a solution to any of these issues as yet? We still cannot use captivate for screen reader accessible training because of the continual 'graphic' statement JAWS makes while reading.

For those that wanted to know how to conceal an unnecessary graphic though, we just merge those to background and they are no longer on the timeline.

We are currently creating an accessible PDF version of the training for JAWS users, and using fillable form fields for the quiz questions.

[deborahschonfeld]

Also, we cannot get JAWS to read captivate projects properly in FireFox. What will happen when IE goes away soon? Will we have an even worse problem with captivate and accessibility?

[foodi]

I've built an e-learning module using captivate 8 using a slideshow template. I'm using the TOC to navigate through a series of slides per unit.

Here's an example: http://www.fastfoodi.com/FILES/BUILDINGSTRENGTHS/unit1_/index.html

The main issue i'm having is that when the user advances to the next slide all the previous slides are being retained somehow and JAWS reads through everything starting at the very first slide.  So, the JAWS user has to skip forward to get to the current slide AT EACH SLIDE.

Obviously, this makes the module completely unusable with JAWS. Has anyone experienced this? If anyone has any comments, i'd love to hear them.