Screen reader accessibility for non-interactive objects

[christytucker]

I'm working in Cp 8 and trying to make a course fully Section 508 compatible. I've been testing with the screen reader Window-Eyes. The screen reader can access the playbar buttons and TOC fine, and it usually recognizes interactive elements on the screen. However, most of the time, the screen reader isn't acknowledging any captions or smart shapes with text on the screen. Many slides are just text plus a transparent text button to pause the screen, so mostly I need the screen reader to read the course content. According to the documentation, I shouldn't have to copy the text into the Accessibility Name for each object, although I have tried that in a few places without success. The accessibility functionality seems so flaky. Once in a while I can get something to work, but not completely, or I can't repeat it.

I have been able to get the screen reader to read the text if I remove all interactive elements including the playbar and TOC. In other words, if I have a 1-slide course, Captivate's accessibility works. As soon as I try to give people an option to advance to the next slide via a button or playbar controls, it stops working.

Yes, accessibility is turned on. I have tried showing and hiding the rectangle around objects in HTML5. I've tried both SWF and HTML5 publishing. I tried switching to transparent text buttons rather than click boxes, which has seemed to make a little difference. I have tried different keyboard shortcuts and made sure I never use the same shortcut twice on a single slide.

How does a screen reader access the text content within Captivate? The documentation says you can access it with arrows, but that doesn't work. What are people doing in the real world to make courses accessible when the program doesn't work the way the documentation says it should?I know from reading other threads that some organizations have given up and just gone to providing text alternatives.

I'm open to any suggestions.

[RodWard · Accepted solution]

My suggestion is you do what the others have already done.  Trying to make Captivate content "fully Section 508 compliant" is not a realistic goal.

As you have noted, the screen readers prefer to pay attention to interactive objects.  So you would need to use interactive objects even for those text objects that didn't need to be buttons.  (You can set their ON Success action to No Action so that they just sit there and do nothing.)

But you are still going to run into issues at some point and those issues will be showstoppers.

So, save yourself a lot of hassle and invoke the escape clause in all of the Section 508 and W3C Accessibility documentation that allows you to offer a "text-based alternative".  Create an accessible MS Word or PDF document that contains the same content.  You'll do that in a fraction of the time it would take you to UNSUCCESSFULLY try to get Captivate's e-learning content to satisfy all Section 508 rules.

Probably NOT what you wanted to hear, but I sincerely feel someone needs to be saying this.

[christytucker]

Thanks, Rod. I was afraid that was the answer I'd get, but I was hoping I'd missed something. I hadn't thought of making everything interactive but set to "No Action," so if they decide they do need to pursue an interactive version we'll try that route.

[moyco]

Unfortunately, a text-based alternative hasn't been a viable option for the Federal government products for years. It would really be nice if Adobe could/would work with some accessibility experts (actual real-world people who have developed training for the government and know the requirements) to fix the problems. At least come up with some viable work arounds. I've been developing 508-compliant, accessible training for years and unless it's very simple we just cannot use Captivate. This is a shame because of the great SCORM options Captivate offers.

[RodWard]

In my experience the bigger issue here is that many clients (government especially) simply have  very unrealistic expectations when it comes to accessibility compliance.

There's a subtle irony in the fact that an initiative like 508 that was originally introduced to protect a small percentage of users whose needs were not being addressed has now become something that means the vast majority of users are instead disadvantaged and can no longer be given truly engaging e-learning.  Although a careful reading of the 508 and other accessibility guidelines reveals this was never the intention, it seems that this is the way it's currently being applied.

[bluzdancer78705]

You mention a 'small percentage' of users, however, there are over 7 million blind adults in the United States (based on 2013 data). There are over 600k in my state alone. In either case, law is law. Adobe should make greater efforts to have their products be functional and usable for accessibility given the future of eLearning development being a high trend in coming years and that these laws have been in place for many years.

[RodWard]

The current population of the United States is approximately (according to Google) around 318 million.  If your figure is correct then 7 million would be about 2.2%.  I would say 2% is a small percentage.  Regardless of their percentage of the population, disabled users have rights.  That's what 508 is about.  It is not about ignoring the rights of other non-disabled groups.

The intent of the 508 legislation was to ensure that no group of users, no matter how small, should be inadvertently discriminated against by virtue of their disability.  The intent was NOT to commit an even greater mistake by inadvertently discriminating against the other 90+% of users that do not have a disability.

508 legislation is very fair and reasonable, when executed according to the guidelines.  However, the unfortunate truth is that too many decision makers involved in e-learning are NOT applying it in a fair and reasonable way. By foolishly mandating that all target audience groups must use the same content, they are in effect throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Each user group (able or disabled) should be able to get the training content they need.  It's just as unrealistic to demand that they should both view exactly the same e-learning content as it would be to demand that seeing users should be forced to wear blindfolds so that there is "equality" with blind users.

[moyco]

Rod, your point about not targeting certain groups is valid. The point is to provide an equivalent experience for everyone. It is also unreasonable to demand that developers provide separate (even if they are "equal") training content in order to meet the law, although I have done it when necessary. It is a nightmare ensuring that the content stays current and consistent in all the versions and obviously takes longer to develop.

My 20+ years of experience developing accessible content has shown me that developing fully accessible materials actually improves user experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities or certain disabilities. The product doesn't have to be "plain vanilla" or skip all of the interactivity or animation, but requires creative thinking and extra thought and planning before beginning development.

One other point. There are many other disabilities other than blindness; those users would also benefit if Captivate were more accessible.

[RodWard]

I used blind users only as an example, and specifically because it was this user group suggested by the other poster.

Certainly there are many other disabilities besides blindness, but from my experience it's the needs of blind users that present the greatest difficulties when dealing with accessible e-learning content.

But I'd be interested to hear if in your experiences there's another group that is equally or more difficult to create for.  Deaf users are no problem with e-learning because we can offer Closed Captioning to deliver the same content as the voiceover.

My point is partly that it is by definition impossible to "provide an equivalent experience for everyone".  I'm not saying that it doesn't involve more cost or increase maintenance headaches to create different versions of the content, but I still believe it's an option that SHOULD be considered by management, given that the current approach seems to be build ONLY what the disabled users can consume and then make all users, disabled or not, use it.  If this is what is meant by "equivalent experience" then I feel we are not getting anywhere.

I would personally love to seem more GOOD examples of totally 508 compliant e-learning content that demonstrates "creative thinking".  Any links to such that people on this forum can post would be gratefully accepted.  I'd have to say that all the examples I've seen so far amount to little more than disappointingly simple page-turners.  But that may simply have been my inability to find the good ones.

I don't work for Adobe. But I see plenty of evidence the company is committed to supporting accessibility.  There's certainly more information on their site about it than for any other e-learning tool I've seen.  But perhaps we are just not appreciating the difficulties they face in such an endeavour.

[moyco]

From a purely Captivate development standpoint, blind users are the hardest to develop for, no question. Other issues such as color blindness, cognitive disabilities, and those who can't use a mouse due to physical limitations are more a product of the developer not considering the user (don't get me started...)

I will see if I can provide some examples of training that I consider good and fully 508-compliant. Some of the training I and my colleagues have developed may not yet been posted on public sites yet, but I'll check. For any training that we develop that must meet Section 508 Standards as well as other accessibility requirements, but do not need to be SCORM-compliant, we use straight html or Drupal. We have tested Lectora, Articulate, and Captivate for all eLearning needs and none of those products work well for anything other than very simple output. For training that must be SCORM-compliant, we find SCORM programmers to handle that end or we produce separate products to meet our accessibility requirements.

I am not maligning Adobe at all and am very happy to see improvements in their accessibility capabilities for their products. In fact, I just developed 2 stand-alone training modules in Acrobat that meet all Federal 508 requirements. It was fully tested and usable by blind users and they were able to navigate through all the training and achieve the same results as everyone. (It uses a ton of JS and also has dynamic charting capability, which is accessible. We provided the data in tables for full 508 compliance). I do understand the difficulties in providing solutions/workarounds to all the specific needs necessary to meet the ever-changing accessibility requirements, I just wish it was happening a bit sooner.

I understand and can appreciate the mind-set of all the experts who love all the great things Captivate can do; I also like it for a lot of things and use it whenever I can. However, I am continually frustrated by answers such as "it is unreasonable to expect this to work for everyone" when I don't think it is.

BTW I do also appreciate your contributions to Captivate and have your last couple of troubleshooting books

[dismissme]

Our courses are also for the Fed Government and I cannot get my Captivate courses to pass through our 3rd party QA for 508. As you said above, they won't accept 508 pdf's. Not sure why but it is a much better solution. You stated that you are developing 508 compliant accessible training - what are you using to develop it with? I have had 2 courses kicked back and I am desperate! thank you

[dismissme]

Yes I hear you on this! We development for a government entity, and when you talk about the minority populations...we train first responders, fire and police. It seems pointless that we have to follow the 508 regulations for responders that have to pass physical requirements to fulfill their job tasks, but yet we are required to develop and train the with 508 material. Extra resources (time and money) are really slowing us down. 

[TLCMediaDesign]

You might want to have a look at this thread:

Jaws and Cp 7.01.237 - not BFFs?

The OP Justenuf2bdangerous has posted many times about 508 issues. He/She has put in a lot of work and sharing results concerning CP's accessibility.