[WG: Accessibility] Seeking input for CKEditor issue on providing user help

Thu Jan 6 12:35:13 PST 2011

CKEditor, more than other WYSIWYG editors, has pretty good accessibility for screen-reader users, and includes hidden text with instructions. I’m aiming here for sighted non-mouse users who use the keyboard or other non-mouse adaptive technologies and don’t have access to hidden/invisible text but would benefit from knowing the shortcut hotkeys that they are required to know for effective use. All users, including those with disabilities, would benefit from knowing all of the other shortcut keys, as their use can make inputting and editing text more efficient.

We need to be careful to not only be thinking of screen-reader users which is the persona we are limiting our fixes to when we think of using invisible text.

The TinyMCE, FCKEdit, CKEditor, and the other rich text editor’s hot keys aren’t browser access keys, so they aren’t advertised as such and don’t show up in the access key listings that adaptive technologies might provide.

I’m guessing that putting a visible message like “press Alt+F10 to access the toolbar and escape to leave it” wouldn’t pass review, but really many users will need something almost that immediate. Several of the students we have experience with at IU have cognitive disabilities as well as their physical disabilities and they cannot be expected to drill down through documentation (no matter how well organized) in the help system to find the help they will need. Especially given that Sakai 2.8 has at least 4 different rich text / WYSIWYG editors in use, it doesn’t make sense to expect them to know the difference between them and then for them to find the correct page in the help system that tells them how to use that particular editor. They will simply give up and report it to be inaccessible.

I like Hadi’s suggestion of including a “Quick keyboard help” link close to editor (it should be right before it) that opens a new window with the appropriate page for the given editor automatically loaded in it.

-Brian

From: accessibility-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:accessibility-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Michael S Elledge
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 1:06 PM
To: accessibility at collab.sakaiproject.org
Subject: Re: [WG: Accessibility] Seeking input for CKEditor issue on providing user help

Perhaps you could have invisible text in the tool heading that says "Press F10 to access toolbar, including help." Or, maybe better, a separate shortcut key for help: "Press F10 to access toolbar, press XX for help."

Mike

On 1/6/2011 5:42 AM, Edd Atcheson wrote:
This seems like a good idea. Could we also have an invisible link for screen readers to the help section as well near the top of the page

Edd

Sent from my iPhone

On 6 Jan 2011, at 00:46, Nate Angell <nangell at rsmart.com<mailto:nangell at rsmart.com>> wrote:
Perhaps the most workable solution would be to have each editor include a dedicated help button in the editor toolbar itself that would lead to documentation specifically for that editor.

For example, CKEditor help button could lead to pages like:
http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/Users_Guide/Quick_Reference
http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/Users_Guide/Accessibility
http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/Users_Guide/Keyboard_Shortcuts

What appears to be a help button in a default CKEditor now just lists version /credit info, but perhaps that button could deliver other content or a help button itself is available or could be configured. You can see it on the full CKEditor demo:
http://ckeditor.com/demo

As a failsafe, general sections on rich text editors and accessibility in Sakai's native help could include links to the help for all supported rich text editors, in case navigating to the editor toolbar to find help is impossible or difficult.

- Nate
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 1:24 PM, Richwine, Brian L <brichwin at indiana.edu<mailto:brichwin at indiana.edu>> wrote:
Hello,

The CKEditor is a giant leap forward in making the WYSIWYG editor for Sakai accessible. There is much about it that is accessible now, to keyboard only users especially, that wasn’t accessible in the older FCKEdit. Unfortunately, it requires that the user knows of the existence of special hot key combinations to access various features. For instance, that they need to press Alt+F10 to get access to the CKEditor’s toolbar and to use the ESC key to get back out.

I am wondering about the best method for providing means for the end user to have access to the necessary help information for using the WYSIWYG editor.

I checked the tool specific help in couple of tools (Assignments, Syllabus), and the Overview page for each tool included a “Using the WYSIWYG editor” link in a “How do I?” section. Unfortunately, that page is currently specific to the FCKEdit and doesn’t include any hotkeys information. There are a few issues I see here:

1.       This requires the user to activate the tool specific help, know what “WYSIWYG” means, and find that link among all the others.

2.       The editor help information needs to be specific to the editor in play (FCKEdit, CKEditor, TinyMCE, etc.) as the hotkeys and availability varies by editor.

3.       End users probably won’t know if they are using a given editor (FCKEdit and the CKEditor look very similar).

I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be best to suggest adding a visible “Editor Help” link. It could be positioned right above the editor (aligned to the right). This link could bring up the help tool with a page specific to the given editor.

Or, a sidebar could be displayed alongside the editor that contains a short list of important help information (hot keys, at least) and a link to the larger entry in the help tool. Like how the Confluence system has the “Help Tips” sidebar when in Wiki Markup mode.

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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