Accessibility: Frameworks, Prioritization, and Maturity

As promised, here are the answers to the questions we received during the webinar.

Webinar specific questions

1. Is the framework completely custom or based and built upon something like ISO 30071-1 (https://www.iso.org/standard/70913.html)?
   It was inspired by the RICE method. Thank you for sharing a link to this framework, though. As we mature, I expect our methods will as well.
2. In the case you showed, you have information about how many users face a specific issue. What about the scenario where you have a B2B product with few users?
   Our users are our customers, who typically buy the product for their business and create content they share with learners. For our framework, the issues that we track are usually reported by the customer who bought the product because they've run into a problem themselves or one of their learners reported an issue
3. Was a reviewing/auditing platform, like Siteimprove, not useful for documentation and tracking? Our company uses Siteimprove to track accessibility issues, and their dashboard lets us sort by a few different categories.
   This wasn’t considered, but thank you for sharing that resource. 
4. Do you refer only to WCAG or also to EN 301 549 of the EU?
   Our conformance reports include both WCAG and EN 301 549, but for the framework, we only referenced WCAG.
5. This may be beyond the scope of this webinar, but how did the priority scores translate to action by prod/project managers and their teams?
   It gives them the autonomy to prioritize the issues based on their available resources.
6. How do you distinguish between “severity” and WCAG level? As I see it, level A violations are synonymous with high severity. Is there more nuance to this?
   We defined severity in the takeaway shared in the resource above. So, to answer your question, it’s more nuanced and a separate point scale.
7. How do you review compliance of internal documents using this framework? Do you have to start by training staff per program (like Word or PPT), or do you use built-in automatic checkers and a general checklist?
   This framework hasn’t been implemented internally.
8. How do you determine severity? Do you factor in the POUR domains, frequency of use, criticality, etc.? Do you have a separate rubric? Also, do you have a process for testing and recalibrating your prioritization for accuracy, ensuring critical but rare problems don't get lost?
   We defined severity in the takeaway shared in the resource above. We check the list (and update it if needed) each month.
9. How do you triage some of the grey areas in WCAG SC? Is there a hierarchy or structure in place for this?
   If there is more than one success criterion, we take the “highest” one. If WCAG does not define it, we may assign a value for weighting.
10. Any best practices that your leadership remains behind Accessibility Maturity while you may operate in a marketplace where accessibility requirements are still a niche concept?
    Many of our clients are large enterprises, and we have government agencies, so it’s not a niche concept, especially with the legislation being implemented in the US and Europe.
11. Do you have defined timelines for different kinds of violations? That is where we get stuck because of the business priorities that get the highest priority. We want to say, "Fix it now or in the next sprint," but they can’t…
    We give our engineering teams autonomy but use this framework for leverage, and our customer liaisons provide feedback to help prioritize.

General Questions

1. What is being done (roadmap) to address the accessibility criteria that are not being met? Some of us responsible for large agency accessibility should know this information for situational awareness.
   We have a public roadmap to show what’s coming. We are aware that one that is specific to accessibility is needed, and we hope to publish this soon. If you have an immediate need, please contact our support team.
2. Is there a URL we can review that identifies all of the accessibility enhancements that have already been addressed and listed in detail?
   We have our version history, which shows all of our enhancements. Rise 360 Version History and Storyline 360 Version History. Knowing this is a common need, I’m happy to share that we’ll be posting some regular “In case you missed it” posts with summaries of all accessibility updates. Check out the first one here.
3. How far out is the accessibility checker?
   We do not have a date to share.
4. Do you have a running list of issues and a roadmap for when they may be addressed so we stay informed?
   We do not have a public-facing bug list, but we do have a public roadmap to show what’s coming. We know one specific to accessibility is needed, and we hope to publish this soon. If you have an immediate need, please contact our support team.
5. Do you invite individuals with disabilities to test the features and provide feedback to your team when addressing accessibility issues?
   Yes. We work with Fable for usability testing.
6. How are you addressing Math and STEM content? Especially in your products, which come from a higher education perspective where MathML is the standard.
   Math equations are on our feature roadmap for Storyline. If you have suggestions regarding alt text for math equations, please share them with our product manager.
7. Regarding accessibility being a moving target, how do you summarize your conformance in communication with partners and customers? For example, do you say, "We are WCAG 2.2 AA conformant?" Or do you summarize it more abstractly?
   While our VPAT uses the latest 2.5 International Edition and includes WCAG 2.2, we state that our products allow authors to create WCAG 2.1 AA conformant courses. 
8. Training offered?
   Absolutely. Check out all of our training options here.
9. Can you describe how to provide accessible radio buttons or checkbox label boxes? One way to program a question is to associate it with an answer.
   If you are having difficulty with a project you’re working on, please contact our support team.
10. I often find the Articulate VPATs for Storyline and Rise inaccurate. For example, in Storyline, there are significant issues when text spacing is applied, but this is not called out in your VPATs. Are you correcting this, and do you have timing on this?
    I’d love to hear more about this. Could you e-mail our accessibility team? a11y@articulate.com

Storyline Questions

1. Do you have a timeline for when keyboard/voice recognition software users will be able to use Storyline to author courses?
   While authors can create accessible courses, the authoring experience is only partially accessible and doesn't fully support screen readers or other accessibility tools. For example, this article describes where Storyline 360 authoring is currently accessible.
   Our priority is to improve the accessibility of published output for your learners to provide the greatest value to our customers. While we don't have a timeline for fully compliant authoring experiences with accessibility guidelines, we're making incremental progress. Accessible authoring is on our radar for inclusion.
2. At what point do you listen to what we feel is imperative to have "fixed" in SL360?
   Via the prioritization framework, we shared in the webinar. The prioritization framework is based on bug reports and feature requests we get directly from customers. The more times something is reported or asked for, the higher the priority index. Customer requests are directly impacting these numbers.
3. I would like to work with you on the checker and testing it. I am a certified tester with DHS and IAAP and oversee accessibility for 18,000 staff.
   Please contact our support team.
4. Articulate. I'd also love it if your customers could bounce feedback higher than the eLearning Heroes forum. I'm an eLearning developer with my CPACC certification, and I wish Articulate had more accessibility features built into it from the start. For example, Things like focus order could be more straightforward to explain to team members who want to do the right thing.
   Our team monitors and tracks your feedback in E-Learning Heroes to include it in the prioritization we shared in the webinar. You are welcome to share your feature requests with us, too.
5. Do you also recommend using code (Java or HTML5) within Storyline 360 to advance accessibility features in our course development, and if so, do you have an example to share?
   This is not something we typically recommend or can support. Please contact our support team so we can understand your needs.
6. Any updates on considering focus order on individual layers vs focus order for everything on the main slide?
   There is no update, but we are tracking this request.

Rise Questions

1. What is being done to make Rise meet WCAG criteria?
   You can create courses that are WCAG 2.1 AA conformant. Please contact our support team so we can understand your needs.
2. Are the drag-and-drop feature and the flashcard feature more accessible to keyboard users?
   The flashcard grid and flashcard stack are accessible in Rise. We are still working on the drag-and-drop items (interactive sorting activity and knowledge check matching).
3. I'd also love for it to be easier to maneuver things like turning on/off animations in Rise on a labeled graphic.
   Please feel free to share your feature requests with us.
4. I hate to be “that guy,” but I would love to know when the scenario and drag and drops will be available ;-)
   I'm so excited to share that scenario blocks are now accessible! We're still working on drag-and-drop, but they're on the public roadmap.