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Problem with Terms of Use Acceptance Form: Accessibility Issue or Operator Error?

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From: Nusbaum, Christopher
Date: Jul 17, 2014 6:35AM

Good Morning Listers,

As many of you are probably aware, I currently work as an intern in my local school system's IT department, specializing in supporting and maintaining our assistive technology as well as evaluating our in-house software for accessibility and providing feedback to the developers. I encountered a problem yesterday which I am not sure whether I should bring to the developers because I don't know whether to deem it an accessibility problem or an operator error.

There is a portion of our in-house Web portal which requires that each employee accept an "Acceptable Use Policy," or a Terms of Use agreement, before we are granted full access to the Internet. I first tried to bypass the agreement by pressing JAWS key + F5 and going directly to the accept button. However, something in the software recognizes when one has not read through the entire agreement and presents an error dialogue which asks the user to read through the entire document. When I did this, however, the system still gave me the same error. It seems that it relies on the position of the PC cursor to determine whether the full document has been read. When I down-arrowed through the agreement, the JAWS cursor moved, but the PC cursor did not move with it. I had to have one of the sighted techs move the PC cursor to the end of the scroll bar with the mouse in order for the acceptance to go through. Is there something I'm missing? Is there a way to move the PC cursor along w
ith the JAWS cursor? If not, I would consider this an accessibility concern. What, then, would your suggestion be to our developers to fix it? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

Christopher A. (Chris) Nusbaum, Intern
Technology Services Department
Assistive Technology Program
Carroll County Public Schools
125 North Court Street
Westminster, MD 21157
Phone: (410) 751-3428
Cell: (443) 547-2409
Email: <EMAIL REMOVED>