[Xerte] Re: Xerte online toolkits and Jaws

[Alistair McNaught]

We had some testing done by RNC Hereford recently using Jaws, Supernova, WindowEyes and NVDA. NVDA worked a lot better than all the others - bizarrely considering NVDA is free and JAWS etc cost an arm and a leg. The Tab order was generally predictable but could start at unexpected places depending on how you moved from slide to slide - eg using Next, Continue or PageDown might start you in a different place.

The recommendation would be to
1) use NVDA or 2) In general access for blind users can be more effective using Internet Explorer as the browser and switching on the onboard TTS but as this involves switching off the NVDA voice you need to ensure  the user doesn't accidently end up out of the Xerte object or they endup 'up the creek without a screenreader'.

A


From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 30 May 2012 12:05
To: Xerte discussion list
Subject: [Xerte] Re: Xerte online toolkits and Jaws

Interesting: we do this in Flash to set up the screen reader stuff:

     this.backBtn._accProps = new Object();
     this.backBtn._accProps.name = engine.languageData.backButton[0].description;
     Accessibility.updateProperties();

As far as I know JAWS should read the _accProps.name property. I'm trying to find out if we should also set _accProps.description, but am a bit unsure why JAWS is failing to do what a screen reader should do. If I know what to change to make this work, it's trivial and I'll happily do the changes, just not sure why this hasn't been flagged up before if there has always been a problem. AFAIK, the accessibility stuff works well in screen readers?

Anyone from techDis able to chip in with any insight? Does this fail in all versions of JAWS?

From: xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk [mailto:xerte-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of K.L.Baker
Sent: 30 May 2012 10:41
To: 'xerte at lists.nottingham.ac.uk'
Subject: [Xerte] Xerte online toolkits and Jaws

Hello

A colleague has been testing some learning objects that we've developed using Xerte online toolkits with Jaws screen reading software. The results have not been that good so far and I would like to try to improve this. A significant issue has been that the Xerte navigation buttons at the top and bottom (e.g. next page, previous page) don't seem to be labelled helpfully - (e.g. Unlabeled 14 Button; 1 Button; Unlabeled 16 Button etc). Is there a way that we can edit the source code somehow to provide accurate labels for the buttons? I think this would improve the situation a great deal. I am not a technical person but we do have a developer who could do this for us if it's possible.

Many thanks for your advice

Kirsty Baker
Information Literacy Specialist
Open University Library
01908 (8) 58478




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