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Re: Best Online Survey Tool

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From: Denis Boudreau
Date: Aug 1, 2011 8:48PM

Good evening Jim,

Oh, I'm very sorry. I truly didn't know rubber stamping had a pejorative or negative connotation. I wish I could crawl under a rock right now.

My actual intention was really to point out that since it had been certified/validated as being Section508 compliant by Jim Thatcher, therefore, SurveyMonkey had to be good (even though I must admit this lack of h1 surprises me).

I now understand the term "rubber stamp" doesn't mean what I thought it meant. It's easy to blame this on the fact that english is only a second language to me, but still, I genuinely ask you to accept my most sincere apologies. This is not what I meant and I should have looked up the definition before using it. Rest assured that in no way did I mean any kind of disrespect.

As I told you in the email exchange we had last week, I have nothing but admiration for the outstanding work you brought to our field, a feeling that is certainly shared by the vast majority of us on this mailing list.

Again, I am truly sorry my limited english played tricks on me today and brought you some undeserved disrespect. I can only hope you understand and see this incident as what it actually is, a huge blunder from my part.

Best regards,

--
Denis Boudreau
Téléphone : +1 514.730.9168
Courriel : <EMAIL REMOVED>




On 2011-08-01, at 6:32 PM, Jim Thatcher wrote:

> Dennis,
>
> I am really disappointed that after our correspondence prompted by your
> negative tweets about Survey Monkey, now you refer to me "Rubber Stamping"
> Survey Monkey. Those surveys are accessible like none I have seen. And we
> all worked hard to make them usable with a screen reader. Some of the issues
> you raised are important and I told you I was contacting Survey Monkey about
> those. In particular the lack of focus indication in Firefox is a critical
> problem. I tend to live in IE where the focus indication is fine.
>
> Jim Thatcher
> http://jimthatcher.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Denis Boudreau
> Sent: Monday, August 01, 2011 10:48 AM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Best Online Survey Tool
>
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>