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.
Hey there, Mylene. We are working toward full screen reader support of Rise 360 content. I can't be specific about a timeline, but you'll be notified by email if we post new information here!
I agree - a consolidated document of the features mentioned above would be very useful. We have a number of clients who are public sector and this is part of the contract. I believe there is new legislation coming in to the UK soon, too, that will increase the accessibility requirements for public sector bodies.
I really appreciate Sharon's list (above) of what worked well with a screen reader and what didn't, but it's concerning to think that many of the exciting interactive features of Rise 360 may not be WCAG compliant. I'm working on a staff training course that contains flash cards, sorting activities and scenario blocks; I'm hoping to include labelled graphics, too, and arrived here while searching for info on alt text. Can anyone direct me to Rise-specific WCAG guidance, please? Thank you!
While our ultimate goal is to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we're not there yet. As we move closer towards that goal, we'll share updates in this discussion.
As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is there any chance of Articulate hosting a Rise Accessibility focused workshop/webinar to help your paying userbase understand best practices given the current state of Rise functionality? Which is to say, we understand that Rise is not 100% accessible at this moment (as an example, drag and drop will likely never be accessible), but how do we best use Rise as it stands today?
My impression is that if we (as developers) create content in Rise carefully we can actually create adequately accessible content, avoiding the use of certain features and making sure to use others properly. Now, that might not be perfectly true in the case of all screen-readers, etc., but it is likely close enough. One of the beautiful things about Rise is that, from a user perspective, all we have to do is re-open an asset and republish to once any future accessibility updates are released from Articulate. Tips like that would give us the confidence we need to continue considering Rise for development purposes.
Does Articulate have an accessibility/compliance specialist? Most of us have felt a bit like we're swimming in the dark for the past year or two. Thanks for considering.
Our organization would be extremely interested in this as well!! We are currently at a standstill with Rise- and we don't know all of the ins and outs to make it as accessible as possible
I think its a little bit of trial and error for us. For example, some things work well with the screenreader JAWS, but not with screenreaders that are built into the OS.
In the spirit of sharing, I would point out that there are accessible drag and drop activities out there in the wild. I made this a feature request for RISE, so I remain hopeful.
Thanks for sharing your needs, Ephraim! Our immediate webinar schedule doesn't include an accessibility-focused session, but I'll share your idea with my team.
I was actually asked this week for an accessible version of a Rise course I had developed, I exported the course as a PDF and sent this to the person requesting an accessible version and she was very happy with the results. Until Rise becomes fully accessible I am exporting older Rise courses as PDFs and then adding these as an alt version on the same course page alongside the RISE package.
For what it's worth, my colleague and I put together an in-house VPAT Template for Rise. As of this writing, it is somewhat better than it one was (as of the Jan 19 update), but still has some significant problems.
Note that this document is looking for *minimum standard of accessibility* at the A and AA level. It doesn't get into the great ideas others have here for enhancement.
For what it's worth, my colleague and I put together an in-house VPAT Template for Rise. As of this writing, it is somewhat better than it one was (as of the Jan 19 update), but still has some significant problems.
Note that this document is looking for *minimum standard of accessibility* at the A and AA level. It doesn't get into the great ideas others have here for enhancement.
This is Great Eric! Thanks for sharing that
Really looking forward for major improvements on the accessibility of Rise. I work for a government organization and we need our courses to meet WCAG 2.0 AA.
I'm wondering if another possible workaround might be to branch off into an adapted version of the course and import storyline blocks only to ensure it's accessible? As I understand it, Storyline is fully accessible and WCAG compliant so you could just use storyline blocks in that branch of the course and it would be considered accessible? Anyone try this? Thanks!
Following. This is so important and I'm not using RISE as much as I would like to until it is addressed. Thanks to everyone who added some great ideas that will hold me over for a little bit longer.
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Hey there, Mylene. We are working toward full screen reader support of Rise 360 content. I can't be specific about a timeline, but you'll be notified by email if we post new information here!
Hi Ashley, Is there any update on the release date for screen readers being fully supported by Rise?
Hi, FSMTB. We don't have a release date for full screen reader support at this time.
I agree - a consolidated document of the features mentioned above would be very useful. We have a number of clients who are public sector and this is part of the contract. I believe there is new legislation coming in to the UK soon, too, that will increase the accessibility requirements for public sector bodies.
I really appreciate Sharon's list (above) of what worked well with a screen reader and what didn't, but it's concerning to think that many of the exciting interactive features of Rise 360 may not be WCAG compliant. I'm working on a staff training course that contains flash cards, sorting activities and scenario blocks; I'm hoping to include labelled graphics, too, and arrived here while searching for info on alt text. Can anyone direct me to Rise-specific WCAG guidance, please? Thank you!
Hi Paula,
While our ultimate goal is to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we're not there yet. As we move closer towards that goal, we'll share updates in this discussion.
Hi Alyssa,
As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is there any chance of Articulate hosting a Rise Accessibility focused workshop/webinar to help your paying userbase understand best practices given the current state of Rise functionality? Which is to say, we understand that Rise is not 100% accessible at this moment (as an example, drag and drop will likely never be accessible), but how do we best use Rise as it stands today?
My impression is that if we (as developers) create content in Rise carefully we can actually create adequately accessible content, avoiding the use of certain features and making sure to use others properly. Now, that might not be perfectly true in the case of all screen-readers, etc., but it is likely close enough. One of the beautiful things about Rise is that, from a user perspective, all we have to do is re-open an asset and republish to once any future accessibility updates are released from Articulate. Tips like that would give us the confidence we need to continue considering Rise for development purposes.
Does Articulate have an accessibility/compliance specialist? Most of us have felt a bit like we're swimming in the dark for the past year or two. Thanks for considering.
Yes, please do this!
Our organization would be extremely interested in this as well!! We are currently at a standstill with Rise- and we don't know all of the ins and outs to make it as accessible as possible
I think its a little bit of trial and error for us. For example, some things work well with the screenreader JAWS, but not with screenreaders that are built into the OS.
In the spirit of sharing, I would point out that there are accessible drag and drop activities out there in the wild. I made this a feature request for RISE, so I remain hopeful.
Thanks for sharing your needs, Ephraim! Our immediate webinar schedule doesn't include an accessibility-focused session, but I'll share your idea with my team.
Hello,
One option I am having to do is to have an accessible PDF version of the RISE course.
The document only had a few errors in Acrobats Accessibility testing, so I'm correcting some of those issues.
Has anyone else done this for their course in order to stay compliant?
Second Option:
Another option that seems to work well is to copy all text content into a .txt file. Screen reader seems to work very well with it.
Can someone else test this and confirm?
I was actually asked this week for an accessible version of a Rise course I had developed, I exported the course as a PDF and sent this to the person requesting an accessible version and she was very happy with the results. Until Rise becomes fully accessible I am exporting older Rise courses as PDFs and then adding these as an alt version on the same course page alongside the RISE package.
Thank you!
This post was removed by the author
For what it's worth, my colleague and I put together an in-house VPAT Template for Rise. As of this writing, it is somewhat better than it one was (as of the Jan 19 update), but still has some significant problems.
Note that this document is looking for *minimum standard of accessibility* at the A and AA level. It doesn't get into the great ideas others have here for enhancement.
This is Great Eric! Thanks for sharing that
Really looking forward for major improvements on the accessibility of Rise. I work for a government organization and we need our courses to meet WCAG 2.0 AA.
I'm wondering if another possible workaround might be to branch off into an adapted version of the course and import storyline blocks only to ensure it's accessible? As I understand it, Storyline is fully accessible and WCAG compliant so you could just use storyline blocks in that branch of the course and it would be considered accessible? Anyone try this? Thanks!
This post was removed by the author
This post was removed by the author
This post was removed by the author
Any success in screen reader support and what is the steps to access the blocks for Jaws screen reader, any document Articulate could provide?
Hi there, SibaPrasad. No update for screen reader support yet. We're shooting for the end of this year!
Following. This is so important and I'm not using RISE as much as I would like to until it is addressed. Thanks to everyone who added some great ideas that will hold me over for a little bit longer.
Hello Crystal, do you have an updated estimate for screenreader support?