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Re: Adobe Connect & accessibility

for

From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Oct 1, 2010 6:33AM

I don't know what the sign-up issue was, but that isn't part of Connect. The log-in for the current version of connect is fully accessible (it's an HTML page with 2-3 form controls, with labels) - once logged into an event like yesterday's screen reader users can listen to the discussion (via VOIP) but since the user interface is not screen reader accessible at present interacting with the meeting is very limited and usually occurs via an alternative means (e.g. since the chat interface is not screen reader accessible organizers will often set up an equivalent alternative conduit for questions to be submitted).

Re: captioning, Adobe provides a captioning extension that is free and easy to use. Meeting organizers do need to fund a captioner to actually do the captioning still. Also, the closed captions are recorded along with the rest of a recorded event.

Thanks,
AWK

Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems

<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Karen Mardahl
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2010 2:19 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Adobe Connect & accessibility

Hi Marc

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Marc Seguin < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I am working to develop an accessibility best practices guide concerning
> the use of Adobe Connect for a federal agency that I work for. In the list
> archives I discovered that there was a discussion back in November 2009 and
> Hadi had shared some good information about web conferencing products at
> that time. There have also been a few resources that I have found useful on
> Adobe's site and connectusers.com, but I was hoping that one of the
> knowledgeable people here might know of any others helpful places to look.
>

I attended the a11ysummit conference held yesterday using Adobe Connect. Why
not write to http://a11ysummit.com/ and ask whether you can send the
participants a few questions? I understood at least one blind user attended,
and got the impression there were others with low vision. I also heard one
blind couldn't/wouldn't attend because of the sign-up procedure that was not
accessible to him. They had (very impressive) live CART captioning. Not a
basic part of Connect, but it shows it can easily be integrated. I think
that conference experience should provide good insights.

regards, Karen Mardahl
http://flavors.me/kmdk & http://www.stc-access.org