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Re: Accessibility of Blackboard CMS?

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From: Gunderson, Jon R
Date: Apr 24, 2014 8:04AM

Alexa,

Blackboard has done a lot to improve the accessibility of their products in the last 5 years and have more (but not perfect) internal controls to improve accessibility.

But they are a big company with many projects so some parts are more accessible than other parts (e.g. some still not accessible at all) and they have only recently started to add basic ARIA technologies like Landmarks to their main product.

They do have an accessibility interest group that meets monthly and creates sub groups periodically to test the accessibility of new products they are working on.

The best chance you have for getting accessibility improvements is when they are working on creating a new feature or updating an existing feature.

You can contact JoAnna Hunt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > to request to be part of accessibility interest group to help monitor and improve the accessibility of Blackboard.

In general accessibility with these large web applications is not either accessible or not accessible, it is a continuum and if the company is not getting any actionable accessibility feedback then they will think everything is OK for accessibility. So it is very important to take a long term view of accessibility with companies like blackboard and it is more of a partnership for the long term. Don't assume they know anything about accessibility, they are trying to learn about accessibility as issues come up and they become aware of them. You need to see yourself as an educator, the more you know about the issue the more you can help come up with a good fix.

Jon


-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Alexa Schriempf
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 4:19 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] Accessibility of Blackboard CMS?

Hello -

Apologies for any cross-posting:

My university is testing Blackboard as a potential CMS that we might switch over to. Any thoughts out there about its accessibility status? Is it accessible, what features should one negotiate for if it's missing accessible baked-in features? Anyone have experience in working with Blackboard to make it more accessible?

Feel free to PM or post to list. Thanks!

Alexa

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Alexa Schriempf, Access Tech Consultant
Office for Disability Services
Teaching and Learning with Technology: Accessibility Group Adaptive Technology Services, University Libraries Penn State https://sites.psu.edu/aschriempf/ http://equity.psu.edu/ods http://tlt.its.psu.edu/ http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/adaptivetechnologies.html





--
Alexa Schriempf, Access Tech Consultant
Office for Disability Services
Teaching and Learning with Technology: Accessibility Group
Adaptive Technology Services, University Libraries
Penn State
https://sites.psu.edu/aschriempf/
http://equity.psu.edu/ods
http://tlt.its.psu.edu/
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/adaptivetechnologies.html