[Using Sakai] Sakai unusable by blind student
Matt Clare
Matt.Clare at BrockU.CA
Fri Mar 20 15:31:17 PDT 2015
Hi Marilyn,
Thanks for altering us. I’ve cross-posted my response to accessibility at collab.sakaiproject.org<mailto:accessibility at collab.sakaiproject.org> to involve the rest of that community as well.
Sakai has a record of being well received by users of assertive devices as released, but the challenge is making sure all the content added to the system is accessible — a challenge worth meeting, because an LMS isn’t much good without anything in it.
As other have speculated, the problem was likely images in the quiz. As JAWS will read the filename if no alternative text is provided. Recently versions of Sakai have instructions on creating accessible content in the help documentation https://trysakai.longsight.com/portal/help/TOCDisplay/content.hlp?docId=richtexteditoraccessibilityguidelines but there is also consideration to making adding alternative information required in future versions of Sakai.
The fmath math formula creator, as I think was mentioned, is neither accessible when creating formulas or when they are viewed by students. Math is a tough thing to make accessible on the web, but the best solutions make the formulas inspectable (assistive software can navigate through it, unlike alternative text) and make it high fidelity so that it can be zoomed. WIRS is a good solution. Sakai 11 will support MathJAX, which displays LaTeX, MathML and other equation markup made in common external tool in accessible manor. More on that here https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-22384
Other issues with Sakai tests have been that question types like matching. The layout of the matching questions can be very difficult to navigate and modify if you can't visually perceive all the options and constantly have to have them read to you.
I’d be happy to hear more about this experience from you or others involved so that we can learn from it and improve Sakai.
The “RA11y Plan” for enhancing Sakai’s already been mentioned https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/2ACC/rA11y+Plan . It’d be great to address this situation with that initiative.
It would be great to have a recording or export of the quiz to review — and I’d assume the instructor won’t want that floating around the web, so please feel free to contact me directly.
Thanks for letting us know,
.\.\att
Matt Clare
Matt.Clare at Brocku.ca<mailto:Matt.Clare at Brocku.ca>
Chair, Sakai Accessibility Working Group
Manager, eLearning
Centre for Pedagogical Innovation
Part-time Instructor
Interactive Arts and Sciences
Brock University, Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada
http://brocku.ca/pedagogical-innovation 905 688 5550 xt 4539 Office: SBH321
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1. Re: sakai-user Digest, Vol 73, Issue 33 (Carles Aguil?)
2. Re: Sakai unusable by blind student (Wilma Hodges)
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 17:13:17 +0100
From: Carles Aguil? <carles at wiris.com>
Subject: Re: [Using Sakai] sakai-user Digest, Vol 73, Issue 33
To: sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org
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Hi Marilyn,
We adopt exactly that approach in WIRIS regarding math formulas.
Image + textual description:
www.slideshare.net/wirismath/achieving-accessibility-in-mathematics-and-scientific-fields
You can also try it live at www.wiris.com/editor/demo/en/accessibility
And just to clarify: WIRIS is free up to 1.000 formulas per year, paying
above that.
Best,
Carles
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:31:55 -0400
From: Wilma Hodges <wilma at longsight.com>
Subject: Re: [Using Sakai] Sakai unusable by blind student
To: Gayle Stein <gstein at rutgers.edu>
Cc: "sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org"
<sakai-user at collab.sakaiproject.org>
Message-ID:
<CAJx7ym5zbd8Ok6CZhhdFUqDM00j8oKWKq604o=mMebE--Ji2xg at mail.gmail.com>
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There is also a community effort for improving accessibility called the
RA11y Plan which is currently underway. The goals are to complete a
comprehensive VPAT of the current version and complete an audit to certify
accessibility (such as the National Federation of the Blind certification).
You can find more details at the link below.
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/2ACC/rA11y+Plan
*Wilma Hodges*
Director of Training & eLearning Initiatives
Longsight
wilma at longsight.com
www.longsight.com
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Gayle Stein <gstein at rutgers.edu> wrote:
We're hoping to accessibility test Sakai 11 during the community QA
process, but will need help doing so. If you're interested, please let
Neal (and me) know so we can coordinate our efforts--Gayle
==
Gayle K. Stein, MS, MLS, Ph.D.
* Associate Director for Instructional Technology
* Director, Accessible Information Technology Initiatives
* Adjunct member of the faculty and internship coordinator, Information
Technology and Informatics undergraduate program, School of
Communication and Information
* Member, University Senate and Research and Graduate & Professional
Education Committee
* Member, Institutional Review Board
* Member, CIC Information Technology and Accessibility Group, Learning
Technologies Group, Online Learning Group
On 3/20/15, 11:08 AM, Matthew Jones wrote:
Yeah, if this is happening in the quiz context, this sounds like it
likely be from some content that was imported from QTI from a published
with badly named images. I'd check that course they were having a
problem with, as the core Sakai shouldn't have this type of problem and
has been used and tested on screen readers in the past.
Thinking about it, the suggestion to require an alt would be good for
images that instructors create, but wouldn't catch the content that was
imported either unfortunately, which *feels* like is a good amount of
the content created in Samigo.
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Jeff Davidson
<jdavidso at southalabama.edu <mailto:jdavidso at southalabama.edu>> wrote:
Diego:
We have recently requested and a community Jira has been created for
requiring alt text for images using the Sakai editor to help with
accessibility compliance.
We are focusing on our course accessibility to ensure all PDFs,
videos and images are accessible (those things over which we have
control beyond Sakai itself).
The issue of accessibility will likely become more and more
prominent and a priority for all universities in the future.
Jeff
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 9:25 AM, Diego del Blanco Orobitg
<diego.delblanco.sakai at gmail.com
<mailto:diego.delblanco.sakai at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Marilyn:
I'm not expert at all in accessibility, but this that you are
commenting is very important.
I don't know what images, the user is finding with the
alphanumeric code becuase most of the images in Sakai Skin have
a normal name... maybe these images has been uploaded by the
instructors that created the content. Or maybe they are Sakai
images.
Anyway, some time ago, for one customer I had, we designed a
patch to allow select the skin by user, so a user can have a
different skin and view the platform in other way. We did some
skins with high contrast and bigger size of the letters. Maybe
this idea can go beyond that, and if we were able to to create a
skin with a very simplified interface without any images that
worked better for the screen readers, and assign it to people
that needs that, it would make things easier for all.
Review all the sakai images and change the name for something
more descritptive and add an "alt" on them surely is something
that can be done too and I think it won't need a lot of work.
In the other hand, again, one thing is Sakai interface and other
is the content that the teacher uploads. Maybe a way to make
mandatory the "alt" field when a teacher uploads an image,
or/and, some education for the instructors when they create the
contents or questions, can help too.
About the first solution I proposed some time ago to change skin
when you enter with a parameter in the
URL,...https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/KNL-860 but this
was not introduced in the main code. It's an option. I'd like
more another option to allow to you, as a user, to select your
own skin in preferences. So we can have skins for screen
readers, high contrast skins, big fonts skins... or any other
thing that helps the people with accessibility problems.
I propose the accessibility group to think about this. I think
that Sakai, with the new Morpheus skin, has an opportunity to
improve this question.
Diego
2015-03-20 6:35 GMT-07:00 Marilyn Dispensa <mdispensa at ithaca.edu
<mailto:mdispensa at ithaca.edu>>:
Hi everyone,
A blind student on campus has been sharing his experiences
with various technologies. He says Sakai is extremely
difficult to use and has the disability office take content
from Sakai site and deliver to him separately. I didn't get
much specifics but when using JAWS he says there are many
images that have a long alphanumeric file name and unless he
memorizes those numbers, he can't navigate. He said it took
3 hours to take a 12 question quiz.
I've noticed that Sakai Project has accessibility efforts
https://sakaiproject.org/accessibility
And the wiki actually talked a bout
T
<
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=82250209
here
also seems to be an accessibility working group.
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/2ACC/Accessibility+Working+Group
?
It seems like there is some testing done, but it is unclear
about the completeness of that effort.
I'm curious if anyone has any experience with Sakai and
actual visually impaired students. If he agrees, I might try
to record his experience and share it with the community.
Maybe there is a user issue or maybe there's a way to go on
this.
Marilyn
--------------------------------------
Marilyn Dispensa
Instructional Technology Coordinator
Information Technology Services
Ithaca College
953 Danby Road
Ithaca, NY
607-274-3647 <tel:607-274-3647>
mdispensa at ithaca.edu <mailto:mdispensa at ithaca.edu>
http://www.ithaca.edu/its/iss
@indispenzable
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--
*Diego del Blanco Orobitg*
Spain & LATAM Regional Manager (/ANI Sakai
<http://www.anisakai.es/>/)
Apereo LATAM Representative (/Apereo Foundation
<http://www.apereo.org/>/)
Ph: +1-480-521-8527 <tel:%2B1-480-521-8527>
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Sk: ddelblanco.ani
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USAonline
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