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Re: Best Online Survey Tool

for

From: Denis Boudreau
Date: Aug 1, 2011 9:48AM

Hi Gary,

I've used Survey Monkey for one last week and the results so far have proven quite satisfying, even though the accessibility support is imperfect: <http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BT95K7M>;.

The problems we found while auditing the survey were:

* No <h1> tags
* No visible focus using the keyboard
* Mouseover effects are not visible when using the keyboard
* The main language of the document is not determined
* Some tags aren't used in the way the spec intends them to be (ie. the use of <abbr> to specify a mandatory question using the *)
* Font sizes being fixed in absolute values

To me, the most important problems aren't the ones a blind user would experience. It's actually users operating without a mouse I'm more concerned with. No visible focus, no onfocus effect, etc. All this makes using only the keyboard almost impossible for them. Making sure those effects also worked with the keyboard would have made a world of differences.

When it comes to screen reader users, as a french speaking individual, I tend to be more concerned with documents whose lang attributes haven't been specified. I have screen reader user friends that have their ATs configured in FR, so for them, this survey becomes impossible to understand as well because the document doesn't tell the AT to switch to EN.

So, between non-english speaking users and keyboard only users, that makes quite a few accessibility concerns we should be worried about as well.

On the plus side, SurveyMonkey decided not to resort to using fieldsets and legends because it does become repetitive using screen readers. The way it was implemented, with the question being repeated once for the very first option only is actually clever. Also, tables are actual data tables, coded properly with with th and scope. Questions are all h3. Page title is h2. No h1, couldn't understand why from talking with Jim Thatcher who rubber stamped it as Section508 compliant a few years ago.

Finally (and I admit it's a much smaller issue), defining font sizes in pixels makes life more difficult for low-vision users still using IE6. And while most have better browsers where zoom can compensate, it's not everyone who benefits from that today. Setting up a relative for value instead is not such a big deal and would have also helped in this matter.

Besides that, everything else, while being perfectible, actually works for those who've tried it. So overall, pretty good if you happen to live in the real world.

/Denis




On 2011-08-01, at 5:48 AM, < <EMAIL REMOVED> > < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Surveymonkey should work. I use it to complete surveys with JAWS and thern't
> any problems eusuallywith this site.
> Chuck
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gary Barber" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 3:03 AM
> Subject: [WebAIM] Best Online Survey Tool
>
>
>> Hi all
>>
>> First post here in a long long time.. so be gentle
>>
>> I need to send out an online survey to about 2000 people with various
>> disabilities. The budget does not allow for a custom survey build.
>>
>> Which online survey tool would people recommend.
>>
>> I have heard, anecdotally, that SurveyGizmo isn't that good with AT
>> despite all their promotional claims.
>>
>> --
>> Gary Barber
>> User Experience Designer
>>
>>
>>