[WG: Accessibility] MORE > Re: Sakai accessibility

[Eli Cochran]

I'm going to respond to my own response. 

On rereading the review, I feel that I should respond a little more strongly in our favor. While I'm sure that the reviewer is accurately describing his experience, it doesn't jive with our own reviews or reviews by others done of the last couple of years. So I'm very interested in knowing more about the review and the protocol used. 

Thanks,
Eli
 
On Aug 4, 2010, at 1:55 PM, Eli Cochran wrote:

> Hi David,
> Thanks for your email, sorry for the delay in reply. 
> 
> While I think that this is an honest and fair assessment of the accessibility of Sakai, I'm curious as to which version of Sakai was being reviewed and which tools the reviewer chose to focus on. Some tools are definitely more accessible than others especially in the navigation. And we've done a significant amount of work in Sakai 2.7 to improve Sakai's accessibility. 
> 
> In our own reviews and reviews by others, Sakai's accessibility is usually described pretty favorably. Sakai is mostly usable by people with disabilities and it's getting better with each release. There are a couple places, especially around rich text editing (an especially tricky area to make accessible) where we know that we have some work to do. 
> 
> If you can send me the particulars, I'll log them as bugs in our issue database.
> 
> I've cc'd the Sakai Accessibility Working Group to see if anyone else in the group would like to respond. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to email the group. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Eli
> 
> On Aug 2, 2010, at 3:24 PM, David Loberg Code wrote:
> 
>> We are selecting a new LMS at Western Michigan University.  
>> A colleague of mine performed accessibility tests for some potential LMS systems.  
>> Below are their comments regarding Sakai.
>> 
>> Do you have any comments or insights you might have regarding their review?
>> 
>> thanks,
>> 
>> david
>> 
>>> As requested, I performed an accessibility review of Sakai using both screen reading and
>>> screen enlargement programs.
>>> 
>>> The following access technology programs were used for my evaluation:
>>> 
>>> Jaws For Windows (JAWS) screen reading program
>>> WindowEyes screen reading program
>>> ZoomText screen enlargement program
>>> Magic screen enlargement program
>>> 
>>> Note: 2 areas that were not evaluated were the accessibility features
>>> used to view streaming content and the ability to download materials
>>> from the websites. Both of the evaluation sites did not have sample
>>> streaming video or audio content nor were there any documents
>>> available for download. These are 2 major areas that the Blackboard
>>> program lacked accessibility in and are a major issue that I
>>> personally found while taking courses through the Distance Education
>>> Program.
>>> 
>>> Sakai Evaluation
>>> 
>>> This program was the least accessible of all those I evaluated, in
>>> comparison to the Moodle and Desire2Learn programs.
>>> 
>>> The Sakai program had the following accessibility issues:
>>> 
>>> The layout was very difficult to understand and navigate using a
>>> screen reader. The program lacked the ability to navigate within html
>>> elements by headings, sections, or other navigational level. This
>>> requires a user to rely upon the use of the keyboard arrow keys to
>>> “view” the entire content of the html page. This is a very tedious
>>> method of navigation and is very slow.
>>> 
>>> Not all graphical links were titled properly and I had to open the
>>> link, go to the next page, and see where the link took me.
>>> 
>>> In a couple of situations, using a screen reader, I was unable to back
>>> up to a previous page and had to go back to the Homepage and then
>>> navigate back to where I previously was. This was very frustrating and
>>> time consuming.
>>> 
>>> The main navigation links changed depending on which page I was on.
>>> Normally, each page will have the “main” links at the top of a page to
>>> allow to move from one main subject, such as the home page, course
>>> content, or other links, readily available to allow for quick
>>> navigation to the subject area desired. This was not the case in all
>>> areas of the Sakai website.
>>> 
>>> I appreciate the “open source” design of the program to allow for
>>> quick changes and/or modifications to the program but have ran across
>>> issues where “open-source” changes were not evaluated for
>>> accessibility prior to being implemented. This may cause a program to
>>> be unuseable for someone using access technologies until the issue can
>>> be corrected. This could have a very detrimental effect on students
>>> who are working under very strict timelines.
>>> 
>>> Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the layout was “clunky” and had a
>>> much larger “learning-curve” than the layout in the D2L program.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> david
>> 
>> David Loberg Code
>> School of Music
>> Western Michigan University
>> Kalamazoo, MI 49008
>> code at wmich.edu
> 
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> 
> Eli Cochran
> manager of user experience design
> user interaction developer
> Educational Technology Services, UC Berkeley
> 
> "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
>     - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

. . . . . . . . . . .  .  .   .    .      .         .              .                     .

Eli Cochran
manager of user experience
user interaction developer
ETS, UC Berkeley

"Do not solve the problem that’s asked of you. It’s almost always the wrong problem."
    - Don Norman




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