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Thread: Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)
From: Howard Kramer
Date: Wed, Dec 05 2012 10:13AM
Subject: Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
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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
From: Pratik Patel
Date: Wed, Dec 05 2012 10:21AM
Subject: Re: Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
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Howard,
I'll be looking at those videos later this week. I'll let you know my
experience and feedback.
Regards,
Pratik
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Mon, Dec 10 2012 1:02PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
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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 ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility
From: Howard Kramer
Date: Mon, Dec 10 2012 1:07PM
Subject: Re: [Athen]Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
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Hi Andrew,
I tried JAWS with a few different browsers. I'll try the tips you mentioned
below and let you know what happens.
Thanks,
Howard
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Andrew Kirkpatrick < = EMAIL ADDRESS 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 ADDRESS REMOVED =
> http://twitter.com/awkawk
> http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility
>
>
>
From: Lucy Greco
Date: Mon, Dec 10 2012 1:29PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
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Hello:
Seeing this reminds me that I wanted to ask is there any instructions for
how a blind screen reader user can use ac to create and edit a video thanks
Lucy
From: Andrew Kirkpatrick
Date: Mon, Dec 10 2012 2:05PM
Subject: Re: Accessibility of Adobe Connect player/pods
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Hi Lucy - There isn't much editing capability in Adobe Connect, just the ability to cut different sections out. If one really wanted to do video editing, exporting a recorded Connect session to a standalone video file offers much greater flexibility, and unfortunately better accessibility as I don't think that the cutting feature is fully accessible.
Thanks,
AWK
Andrew Kirkpatrick
Group Product Manager, Accessibility
Adobe Systems
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://twitter.com/awkawk
http://blogs.adobe.com/accessibility