We are aware that the drag and drop and hot spot interactions are not 508 compliant, however there seems to be issues with other interactions as well. I am curious how some of the big companies listed as customers deal with accessibility issues? Do you provide alternate learning options? What are they? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
One option we explored was creating alternate questions for any drag and drop questions we developed. In the beginning of the course we had an option that the user could select that would make the course more accessible. When the user arrived to a drag and drop questions and they had chosen the accessible option (detected by a trigger and variable) they would be taken to the alternate version of the question. Then they would continue with the rest of the course until they came to another question that required an alternate accessible option. This helped us out a lot because we didn't have to design two different courses, only the questions. We also didn't have to have result slides so I didn't have to worry about that.
Nancy, thanks so much for confirming my observation! I'm so glad I wasn't just me -- now I won't crazy trying to figure out how to manipulate a slider with only a keyboard instead of a mouse.
It wouldn't be that hard. Just have it it Add +1 to the slider variable when the user presses a key (right) or subtract-1 when the user presses another key (left).
A few objects that don't offer accessible features. Scrolling panels and sliders are among them.
One thing that might help make sliders accessible, you can tie the slider to a variable. Adding buttons to set the slider value to a specific number would also affect the slider. So you can make the variable change accessible through other accessible UI controls. Not the best situation, but workable if you'd like to offer a slider control.
One of rules of thumb I have for drag and drop (one that I sometimes break) is not to make anyone drag and drop anything that doesn't have a real world task analogue. If I don't ask them to move or slide something as part of a task step in real space, I'll avoid asking folks to do it in a training program virtual space. This helps with accessibility a bit as these situations can often require full faculties in real world performance. In these cases we made stuff accessible wherever possible (all information was accessible) but some of the activities indicated that vision and motor control were required to complete the activity with an option to skip when it made sense to do so.
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Hi Nicole,
One option we explored was creating alternate questions for any drag and drop questions we developed. In the beginning of the course we had an option that the user could select that would make the course more accessible. When the user arrived to a drag and drop questions and they had chosen the accessible option (detected by a trigger and variable) they would be taken to the alternate version of the question. Then they would continue with the rest of the course until they came to another question that required an alternate accessible option. This helped us out a lot because we didn't have to design two different courses, only the questions. We also didn't have to have result slides so I didn't have to worry about that.
To pick up on Nicole's point, the new slider feature also doesn't seem to be 508 compliant, unless I'm missing something in my tests...
Hi Adele, you are right. The slider isn't 508 compliant.
Nancy, thanks so much for confirming my observation! I'm so glad I wasn't just me -- now I won't crazy trying to figure out how to manipulate a slider with only a keyboard instead of a mouse.
It wouldn't be that hard. Just have it it Add +1 to the slider variable when the user presses a key (right) or subtract-1 when the user presses another key (left).
A few objects that don't offer accessible features. Scrolling panels and sliders are among them.
One thing that might help make sliders accessible, you can tie the slider to a variable. Adding buttons to set the slider value to a specific number would also affect the slider. So you can make the variable change accessible through other accessible UI controls. Not the best situation, but workable if you'd like to offer a slider control.
One of rules of thumb I have for drag and drop (one that I sometimes break) is not to make anyone drag and drop anything that doesn't have a real world task analogue. If I don't ask them to move or slide something as part of a task step in real space, I'll avoid asking folks to do it in a training program virtual space. This helps with accessibility a bit as these situations can often require full faculties in real world performance. In these cases we made stuff accessible wherever possible (all information was accessible) but some of the activities indicated that vision and motor control were required to complete the activity with an option to skip when it made sense to do so.
@Jerson - yes this works although you might want to add conditions to the triggers to stop users from over pressing.
I've attached a simple example without conditions
@Jerson and @ Steve: thanks so much for that idea!
@ Nancy: I'll check out your example -- thanks so much for sharing it!
Adele
Does anyone know if the scrolling panels are now 508 compliant?
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