[WG: Accessibility] Seeking Accessible Collaborative Tools

[Silverio, Gonzalo]

This is a great write up, Mary. Many thanks.

EtherPad is google owned open source, hence amenable to change.

-------------------------
Gonzalo Silverio
gsilver at umich.edu



On Apr 20, 2011, at 4:33 PM, Mary Stores wrote:

> 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
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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