[WG: Accessibility] Seeking Accessible Collaborative Tools

[Mary Stores]

Hello,

The only problem I see with Skype is that it wouldn't work for whole 
documents, only links...

In case anyone is curious, here are the details concerning the 
accessibility issues of EtherPad:

I personally found EtherPad to be slightly more accessible using 
Firefox than IE.

With IE I could only read the document itself. I could read the changes 
made to the document as long as someone pointed out that there were 
changes so that I'd know to find them. With IE I could not access the 
chat at all. JAWS also couldn't find any links or headings. When I 
pressed Insert-F6 to obtain a list of headings or insert-F7 for links, 
JAWS would say "Feature only available in virtual document." Forms mode 
also did not activate, although when I typed in the document, 
everything I typed appeared there when I used the standard arrow keys 
for reading as if I were in Forms Mode.

the firefox results: I did find the heading for the date that is right 
above the chat , but only if I used the letter h to get there. For some 
reason I could not find it using insert-F6, the headings list dialog 
command.

With Firefox I could read the chat messages and the document, but there 
are no audio or Braille alerts to indicate that modifications have been 
made to the document or that new messages are in the chat window. Also 
as Brian said, there is no easy way to navigate from the editor to the 
chat window and back again.

Forms Mode activated automatically using Firefox, and I found it easy 
to get in and out of Forms Mode so that I could read and navigate to 
all the headings and links.

EtherPad has the potential of being accessible if there were some ARIA 
landmarks to navigate from the chat window to the editor or some 
headings. It would also be more accessible if the form elements were 
labeled. I asked Brian to explain what the first unlabeled form field 
was: it turned out to be the edit field where the user can enter their 
name.

I am using JAWS 12.0.525, IE8, and Firefox 3.6.8.

Mary

Quoting "Richwine, Brian L" <brichwin at indiana.edu>:

> At the last Sakai Accessibility Working Group teleconference, a
> desire was raised to find a collaborative tool that everyone could
> use during the phone conference to share information, links, etc.
>
> Mary Stores and I tried out EtherPad (as found at
> etherpad.ctools.org). It wasn't designed with accessibility in mind
> and would definitely be difficult for a screen reader user to use.
> Accessibility problems found include many unlabeled input elements
> and no easy way to navigate the page structure (move from the
> document editor, the chat window, the options/settings, etc.)
>
> Unfortunately, Google docs isn't very accessible either.
>
> Mary suggests that Skype's chat feature is reasonable accessible.
> Since Skype is fairly common, perhaps it is the best option for now.
>
> Does anyone have suggestions for other online collaboration tools
> that we could look at?
>
> Thanks,
>  Brian
>
> Brian Richwine
> Adaptive Technology Support Specialist
> Adaptive Technology and Accessibility Centers
> Indiana University - Bloomington/Indianapolis
> http://iuadapts.indiana.edu
> (812) 856-4112
>
>