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From: Morin, Gary (NIH/NCI) [E]
Date: Nov 5, 2020 3:00PM

I'm looking for some guidance on making sure that information gathering forms are ScreenReader friendly and as practically accessible as possible. The site that is being improved and expanded on is called ASA24 - which currently asks patients to detail their eating behavior for each meal and snack in a day. There's a demo site at https://asa24.nci.nih.gov/demo/. They're going to be adding a module that asks about sleep behavior - time of day, length of time awake in bed, length of time asleep, etc. - for nights, for naps, so forth.
What best practices - from a developer's perspective and/or blind/partially sighted person's perspective can anyone share. The team is really keen to go beyond mere standards conformance and to make their site/tool accessible and usable. they found a tool called When2Meet (https://www.when2meet.com/?10100163-3h77z) which gives the option to fill in a grid-like schedule to indicate busy - in this case, I presume, they're looking to use it as a proxy for asleep. However, it's neither accessible/Section 508-conformant nor keyboard friendly - it relies on a mouse to click each and every quarter hour). https://www.when2meet.com/.
Should text fields be used (they have to capture measurable data), radio buttons and check boxes, or what - what form features are the most usable and self-evident in how to complete. They also want feedback on how much instruction is useful and at what point does it become unnecessary or insulting.
Thanks in Advance!


Gary M. Morin, Section 508 Coordinator
NCI Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL)
NCI Shady Grove Campus, Room 2E-568
9609 Medical Center Drive
Rockville, MD 20850
(240) 276-6920

Web Accessibility - Section 508 Compliance<https://mynci.cancer.gov/topics/web-accessibility-section-508-compliance>: NCI Home Page for Section 508 Guidance
How Do I Make Documents 508-Conformant?<https://mynci.cancer.gov/topics/how-do-i-make-documents-508-conformant>: How Do I Go About Formatting Microsoft Office Documents and PDF Files (new MyNCI page, 4/28/2020)