Forum Discussion
RISE - accessibility features
One year ago there was a discussion around accessibility - WCAG AA, WAI-ARIA Labels, Section 508, DDA, Equality Act and Screen Reader Supports.
It was noted that Articulate were working on this and that there would be further developments in this regard. Have the accessibility issues been addressed. This is important for me as I am about to develop a course and would like to use RISE rather than Storyline.
Thank you
Same in our projects. We didn't pass ac-tests last month again and are waiting for crucial updates.
Hi everyone,
We've been following your recent comments regarding accessibility in Rise 360. To help with your planning, we’ve adjusted the status of the remaining block features on our roadmap to indicate “In Development” because we’ve reached a stage where we feel confident these blocks will fully support the WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria. I can’t share an ETA or a timeline right now, but we promise to keep you posted on our latest developments in our accessibility journey here.
Thank you for your commitment to accessible online learning and for allowing us to partner with you in achieving that goal!
Would love to hear an update on where things currently stand.
The "Accessibility Journey" page was last updated January 2021(!!).
Can we finally be provided some hard dates as to when the outstanding accessibility items (that had been promised for end of 2020) will finally be available? Our 360 licenses are up for renewal soon, and wondering if it's time to finally cut ties if these updates are going to take another 5 years to implement.
As noted above, the update to the accessibility features being changed from "planned" to "in development" was meaningless without a date attached, and was clearly just a superficial move that didn't actually change the priority or status in the backend. Surely at least one of those features should have been fully developed within the last 5 months??
Seems like priority to the few upgrades made to Rise are always given to the low value/low impact items that most customers will rarely use.
Can someone from the development team weigh-in here, instead of making one of the community reps once again do their standard blurb about no updates yet but they'll let us know once there are?
Mark,
I agree wholeheartedly. There are some features of Rise that we really love (ease of use!) but we're also thinking we might not be able to continue with 360 beyond our current term if the accessibility issues aren't addressed. Beyond that, we're concerned that known issues in general seem to take years (if ever) to be fixed.
Perhaps we should start sharing the names of companies we're thinking about switching too...Best,
Ashley
Agreeing with Mark and Ashely here, too.
I would love some solid information as well.
Currently, we do use and recommend Storyline because you can *make* the content accessible but it is not simple, or seamless, and this is a turn off to some of the folx we train to use authoring tools to create learning experiences. Some of those folx then read the... highlights... that articulate shares about Rise and think it's a solution that we somehow overlooked. Of course that is untrue, we keep up with it, but still cannot recommend it. So once we explain that what is written about accessibility is – and I am trying to be kind here – not a full picture of all that is necessary for accessibility, it really diminished the reputation of the entire suite of tools. So, we now actively steer folx away from Rise at the outset because it's not accessible and can't be made accessible to our standards, and ultimately makes our job harder with regard to trying to standardize on one suite of tools for our design and development cycles.We are sending ours to be audited - WCAG Level 2 soon. It'll be interesting to learn what Rise and Storyline 360 features to use and not.
Hi Suziana,
If you're able to share any of the findings from the audit, that would be very helpful. I posted the key findings of an external accessibility audit on one of our courses earlier in this chat. I'm interested to see whether any of the issues I flagged with Articulate from that audit have been resolved.
Thanks,Ashley
Will do. At the moment, I don't use: 1) Flip cards 2) Interaction process 3) Accordion (due to the + icons). I use SL block a lot because I can control the Focus Order.
Knowledge check block is also problematic. So, I removed them and used SL or LMS built-in quiz builder.
We finally got our WCAG certificate! Hey Articulate, I really defended Rise and it has not been easy. There are lots of issues with the features there. SL 360 fares better than Rise though.
Large part is also about focus order and alt text for complex diagrams.
But we got there at the end.
Is there a ballpark release date yet for when Rise will support screen readers?
Hi David,
Our team is still working on these features and making progress but since my last post, we have yet to release additional features. As soon as we do, we'll post in as many forum discussions as we can so that you'll know right away!
Another option is to keep an eye on the Rise Version history and the “What’s New, What's Next" page!
I know you said Rise isn't fully WCAG compliant yet, but do you know if it is Level A WCAG compliant?
Hi Andre,
Thanks for checking in! I don't have an update yet on our compliance with WCAG, but as soon as we do we'll let folks know here!
