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[Athen]Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods

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From: Howard Kramer
Date: Jan 24, 2013 4:09PM

Hi Andrew,

Finally getting back to trying out your suggestions. The JAWS pass-through
ins-3 key did allow access the the play/pause control (via 'p' key). Once
you get to the play/pause control I was able to then get to the time slider
but there was no information other than "slider" provided to JAWS. You get
the same announcement when you tab once more to the volume level slider.
Once on the time slider I was able to use the arrow keys to move the
control ahead or back on the video. Pressing the space key would then move
the actual video to that point for actual playing (if you don't press the
space key you'll jump right back to the original position when you enter
'p' again). But I could only determine how I was moving along the timeline
by percentage. I could not access or read the actual time information (i.e.
"11:00:22/22:00:00") just to the right of the slider.

But the whole thing seemed unreliable -at least to me. I just went back to
check again what's announced when going to the timeline slider and I
couldn't get back to it. I tried different combinations of cntr-F6 and
tabbing. There are definitely controls and pods that should be better
labeled (at least one object on the page is not labeled at all) and it
should be easier to move through different pods.

I'd like to hear from other screenreader users or those who have tested out
the Connect playback interface with screenreaders. Maybe it's just me.

Thanks,
Howard

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Andrew Kirkpatrick < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> Howard,
> The first question that I have is what browser you're using to view the
> recordings. The player is Flash-based and there are challenges getting
> focus into the player on some browsers. That still works best with IE.
> Once you have focus in the Connect recording player window, then you can
> use the keyboard shortcuts.
>
> It seems like there may be an issue with the new Event Overlay area - it
> isn't responding as the other pods are, so appears to be blocking the use
> of the Ctrl+F6 shortcut. If you tab a couple of times to get the focus
> past this item then Ctrl+F6 works as expected (at least it does for me).
> You mentioned Ctrl+F8 also, which doesn't do much in a recording because
> there are no context menus in the recording interface's pods for this
> shortcut to open.
>
> I wasn't able to reproduce an issue with the "p" shortcut not correctly
> toggling the play/pause button, except when the focus was on a text input
> area and in that case the "p" was entered into the control, which I believe
> is the correct behavior. Can you provide steps to reproduce?
>
> The slider to the right of the play/pause button operates with the
> right/left arrow and home/end keys. Like the "p" key, these shortcuts may
> run into difficulties with JAWS grabbing the keystrokes (e.g. for next
> paragraph or next/previous character). If you can provide steps to
> reproduce what you are finding, that would help us. It is worth knowing
> that at least for JAWS the keyboard pass-through is insert+3 so if "p"
> isn't working and then you hit "insert+3" followed by "p" and it does, then
> we at least know why it is happening.
>
> I saw one other comment that the closed captioning wasn't able to be read
> by a JAWS user, and that is true. The captions are hidden from AT, but the
> caption pod does allow you to export a transcript of the event's
> captioning, which may be easier to read for a deaf-blind user.
>
> We'll follow up with the Connect team to make sure that we have bugs
> logged for any reproducible issues, and will add more if other issues are
> identified/clarified.
>
> 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 Howard Kramer
> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 12:14 PM
> To: WebAIM Discussion List; Access Technology Higher Education Network;
> Distribution list for EASI Web Conferences, Podcasts and News
> Subject: [WebAIM] Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
>
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> (Please excuse any cross-posts.)
>
> I wonder if anyone has an insight into the accessibility of
> controls/buttons for the Adobe Connect player (I'm not sure if player is
> the correct terminology - it consists of a series of what they call pods
> [written in Flash action script?]). I've posted the recorded sessions for
> the Accessing Higher Ground conference on the Connect platform.
>
> The Adobe site list hotkeys that can be used with Connect, including
> playback control, at -
>
> http://help.adobe.com/en_US/connect/9.0/using/WS5ae85155c1a0214d1172e081227b89777b-8000.html#WS5e953006aa800217-2e21eaae122a9c49b5b-8000
>
> - but I've found that the hotkeys for playback work unreliably and
> intermittently at best. Cntrl-F6 doesn't always move between the various
> pods; Cntrl-F8 which is supposed to list hotkeys (or "display the pod menu
> for keyboard control") doesn't work at all; many buttons are not labeled
> and even the 'p' command to play/pause doesn't always work. In I.E., when
> the 'p' didn't work I was able to use the JAWS find to focus on the
> play/pause button and at least stop/start the recording that way. I can
> then access the slider control which controls fast-forward or rewind - it
> is labeled thankfully - but there doesn't seem to be a hot-key to control
> it - i.e. to move it.
>
> It looks like I may have to provide the recordings on two different
> platforms - Connect for those who need or prefer the captioning and another
> platform for users of screenreaders and other AT.
>
> I welcome any suggestions/insight/help anyone has on this. I know Andrew K.
> follows the WebAIM list so maybe he'll chime in.
>
> Cheers,
> Howard
> > > messages to <EMAIL REMOVED>
> > athen-list mailing list
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list
>



--
Howard Kramer
Conference Coordinator
Accessing Higher Ground
303-492-8672
cell: 720-351-8668

AHEAD Association of Higher Education and Disability