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Thread: Sharepoint frustrations

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Number of posts in this thread: 9 (In chronological order)

From: Ritz, Courtney L. (GSFC-7500)
Date: Thu, Nov 19 2015 12:29PM
Subject: Sharepoint frustrations
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Hi all,

Apologies if I sent this twice, was having an Outlook issue.

Is there anyone on the list who's had experience developing in Sharepoint 2010 or 2013, and or using it with a screen reader like JAWS?
I'm at my wit's end, trying to help our developers figure out why JAWS keeps treating some of the page content as editable, speaking "edit has pop-up" on each line of text or hyperlink and trying to turn on Forms Mode.
If anyone has any ideas as to what might cause this aggravating behavior and what the developers could maybe do to fix it, please let me know off-list, unless others here are interested in finding out.
Unfortunately, for security reasons, the pages are behind a firewall. The folks at Microsoft and Freedom Scientific both couldn't help us much, since they couldn't see the Sharepoint pages themselves.

Courtney

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Sat, Nov 21 2015 6:31PM
Subject: Re: Sharepoint frustrations
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I have seen these issues, and they are due to the fact that
accessibility of Sharepoint generated content is beyond horid!
Microsoft didn't just drop the ball on accessibility of Sharepoint
generated content, they dug a 100-foot deep hole first.
This has something to do with the misuse of the application role I
think. Then aria-hidden is used incorrectly which hides big portions
of the content.
It has been a few months, and I will have to dig through my notes to
be more specific.
I will try to email you something off-list, if there is still use for
this information.
Cheers
-B


On 11/19/15, Ritz, Courtney L. (GSFC-7500) < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Apologies if I sent this twice, was having an Outlook issue.
>
> Is there anyone on the list who's had experience developing in Sharepoint
> 2010 or 2013, and or using it with a screen reader like JAWS?
> I'm at my wit's end, trying to help our developers figure out why JAWS keeps
> treating some of the page content as editable, speaking "edit has pop-up" on
> each line of text or hyperlink and trying to turn on Forms Mode.
> If anyone has any ideas as to what might cause this aggravating behavior and
> what the developers could maybe do to fix it, please let me know off-list,
> unless others here are interested in finding out.
> Unfortunately, for security reasons, the pages are behind a firewall. The
> folks at Microsoft and Freedom Scientific both couldn't help us much, since
> they couldn't see the Sharepoint pages themselves.
>
> Courtney
> > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

From: Chagnon | PubCom.com
Date: Mon, Nov 23 2015 9:21AM
Subject: Re: Sharepoint frustrations
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Birkir, I'd love for an overview and/or summary of Sharepoint's accessibility problems.
Or if you wanted to write a blog about them somewhere, that would be great.

We no longer work on Sharepoint projects so when my enterprise and government clients ask me about its accessibility, I'm at a loss. I'd like to direct them to some solid info about it and I appreciate your knowledge and expertise.

TIA,
Bevi

— — —
Bevi Chagnon | www.PubCom.com | = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Technologists, Consultants, Trainers, Designers, and Developers
for publishing & communication
| PRINT | WEB | PDF | EPUB | Sec. 508 ACCESSIBILITY |
— — —


From: Moore,Michael (Accessibility) (HHSC)
Date: Mon, Nov 23 2015 9:37AM
Subject: Re: SharePoint frustrations
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I think that SharePoint is the classic example of why you don't do accessibility as a separate process at the end of application development.

SharePoint functional development appears to remain completely divorced from the accessibility add-on that requires turning on "more accessible mode." If Microsoft ever gets serious about the accessibility of their web apps they will probably need to engineer the front end interface from the ground up using a consolidated development team where all of the designers and developers are trained in accessibility. As it is now, it appears that they develop/evolve the front-end and then throw it over the wall to a few developers who labor in an accessibility gulag and must attempt to add the accessibility to the existing application. They are apparently forbidden to alter any of the underlying code that is the source of most of the problems.

An entire cottage industry has evolved to bolt accessibility on to SharePoint. I am sure that there are sound business strategy decisions made by Microsoft to perpetuate this model, and that their shareholders are happy. With their dominance in the enterprise market they really don't have much motivation to change. </rant>

Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Mon, Nov 23 2015 10:16AM
Subject: Re: Sharepoint frustrations
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Hi

I will try to summon my thoughts, such as they are, over Thanksgiving
and put them together into something solid.
I will send it out to one or two of you, who may be able to add to it.
Then I can post it on my website.
Thanks



On 11/23/15, Chagnon | PubCom.com < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Birkir, I'd love for an overview and/or summary of Sharepoint's
> accessibility problems.
> Or if you wanted to write a blog about them somewhere, that would be great.
>
> We no longer work on Sharepoint projects so when my enterprise and
> government clients ask me about its accessibility, I'm at a loss. I'd like
> to direct them to some solid info about it and I appreciate your knowledge
> and expertise.
>
> TIA,
> Bevi
>
> — — —
> Bevi Chagnon | www.PubCom.com | = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> Technologists, Consultants, Trainers, Designers, and Developers
> for publishing & communication
> | PRINT | WEB | PDF | EPUB | Sec. 508 ACCESSIBILITY |
> — — —
>
>
>

From: Karlen Communications
Date: Mon, Nov 23 2015 10:39AM
Subject: Re: SharePoint frustrations
← Previous message | Next message →

While there is "some" accessibility built into SharePoint out of the box, all bets are off once an organization begins customizing the portals for their own branding/use, especially if the developers are not familiar with accessible design.

Deque Systems has a SharePoint solution but it looks like it is integrated into the World Space tool. I tried to find stand alone content on the SharePoint tool and this is the only reference: http://www.deque.com/blog/deque-systems-a-microsoft-gold-certified-development-pertner-releases-a-first-of-its-kind-web-acessibility-solution-for-sharepoint/

HiSoft also has a tool to help with SharePoint accessibility, https://www.cryptzone.com/products/data-security/hisoftware-security-sheriff/hisoftware-solutions-for-sharepoint-and-office-365/office365/accessibility-foundation-module-afm
It looks like HiSoftware is now Cryptzone?

Other articles:

From Microsoft: Accessibility in SharePoint 2013, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj841103.aspx
Accessibility features in SharePoint products (Microsoft), https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Accessibility-features-in-SharePoint-products-F291404A-DC7E-44DE-A31F-D81B3099C2B9
Microsoft (basics), Create an Accessible SharePoint site, https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/basics-create-an-accessible-sharepoint-site-53707eb5-b7b8-4ee0-ae82-9d4d916f7fe1
Cryptzone Insight newsletter, Making SharePoint Accessible, https://insight.cryptzone.com/content-security/sharepoint-security/make-sharepoint-accessible/

Cheers, Karen


From: Chagnon | PubCom.com
Date: Tue, Nov 24 2015 8:22AM
Subject: Re: Sharepoint frustrations
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Thanks, Birkir.
--Bevi Chagnon

From: Ann Pennington
Date: Tue, Nov 24 2015 10:25AM
Subject: Re: SharePoint frustrations
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Discover Technologies has a SharePoint solution as well: http://discovertechnologies.com/products/discover-508-sharepoint/

It runs as an "add on" on top of SharePoint 2010 and 2013 sites. It is probably best for people who leverage the Microsoft out-of-the-box master pages, rather than building the master pages from scratch (which is possible, particularly in 2013). It is quite comprehensive, and Freedom Scientific featured it in multiple workshops about tools for accessibility.

Best of luck!
Ann Pennington

SRA International
Contractor to the VA (Dragon Naturally Speaking, accessible web design/development)




> On Nov 23, 2015, at 11:39 AM, Karlen Communications < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> While there is "some" accessibility built into SharePoint out of the box, all bets are off once an organization begins customizing the portals for their own branding/use, especially if the developers are not familiar with accessible design.
>
> Deque Systems has a SharePoint solution but it looks like it is integrated into the World Space tool. I tried to find stand alone content on the SharePoint tool and this is the only reference: http://www.deque.com/blog/deque-systems-a-microsoft-gold-certified-development-pertner-releases-a-first-of-its-kind-web-acessibility-solution-for-sharepoint/
>
> HiSoft also has a tool to help with SharePoint accessibility, https://www.cryptzone.com/products/data-security/hisoftware-security-sheriff/hisoftware-solutions-for-sharepoint-and-office-365/office365/accessibility-foundation-module-afm
> It looks like HiSoftware is now Cryptzone?
>
> Other articles:
>
> From Microsoft: Accessibility in SharePoint 2013, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj841103.aspx
> Accessibility features in SharePoint products (Microsoft), https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Accessibility-features-in-SharePoint-products-F291404A-DC7E-44DE-A31F-D81B3099C2B9
> Microsoft (basics), Create an Accessible SharePoint site, https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/basics-create-an-accessible-sharepoint-site-53707eb5-b7b8-4ee0-ae82-9d4d916f7fe1
> Cryptzone Insight newsletter, Making SharePoint Accessible, https://insight.cryptzone.com/content-security/sharepoint-security/make-sharepoint-accessible/
>
> Cheers, Karen
>
>
>

From: Kevin Prince
Date: Sun, Nov 29 2015 2:28AM
Subject: Re: SharePoint frustrations
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Having spent much of the last fortnight trying to put together a simple text page that is consistently navigable using Sharepoint I'm stunned by quite how difficult they make it. Even writing raw html and copy/pasting doesn't seem to provide a consistent visual result. I find it quite amazing how badly MS have implemented the tools. To be fair the underlying elements and web parts can be quite accessible but you have to understand how to keep them so. Even something as simple as the ability to type an address as a single paragraph rather than as a set of one line paragraphs seems bloody difficult (solved by writing it in the html editor using <br> rather than carriage returns in the visual editor.

In a tool designed for anyone to edit pages from the janitor up this is not acceptable.

Kev
Access1in5
0212220638
039290692
Independent Accessibility and IT Consultancy.



> On 25/11/2015, at 06:25, Ann Pennington < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> Discover Technologies has a SharePoint solution as well: http://discovertechnologies.com/products/discover-508-sharepoint/
>
> It runs as an "add on" on top of SharePoint 2010 and 2013 sites. It is probably best for people who leverage the Microsoft out-of-the-box master pages, rather than building the master pages from scratch (which is possible, particularly in 2013). It is quite comprehensive, and Freedom Scientific featured it in multiple workshops about tools for accessibility.
>
> Best of luck!
> Ann Pennington
>
> SRA International
> Contractor to the VA (Dragon Naturally Speaking, accessible web design/development)
>
>
>
>
>> On Nov 23, 2015, at 11:39 AM, Karlen Communications < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>>
>> While there is "some" accessibility built into SharePoint out of the box, all bets are off once an organization begins customizing the portals for their own branding/use, especially if the developers are not familiar with accessible design.
>>
>> Deque Systems has a SharePoint solution but it looks like it is integrated into the World Space tool. I tried to find stand alone content on the SharePoint tool and this is the only reference: http://www.deque.com/blog/deque-systems-a-microsoft-gold-certified-development-pertner-releases-a-first-of-its-kind-web-acessibility-solution-for-sharepoint/
>>
>> HiSoft also has a tool to help with SharePoint accessibility, https://www.cryptzone.com/products/data-security/hisoftware-security-sheriff/hisoftware-solutions-for-sharepoint-and-office-365/office365/accessibility-foundation-module-afm
>> It looks like HiSoftware is now Cryptzone?
>>
>> Other articles:
>>
>> From Microsoft: Accessibility in SharePoint 2013, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj841103.aspx
>> Accessibility features in SharePoint products (Microsoft), https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Accessibility-features-in-SharePoint-products-F291404A-DC7E-44DE-A31F-D81B3099C2B9
>> Microsoft (basics), Create an Accessible SharePoint site, https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/basics-create-an-accessible-sharepoint-site-53707eb5-b7b8-4ee0-ae82-9d4d916f7fe1
>> Cryptzone Insight newsletter, Making SharePoint Accessible, https://insight.cryptzone.com/content-security/sharepoint-security/make-sharepoint-accessible/
>>
>> Cheers, Karen
>>
>>
>>