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Thread: Captivate questions
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From: Alan Zaitchik
Date: Wed, Nov 25 2015 1:53PM
Subject: Captivate questions
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I'm taking the liberty of reposting an earlier note which didn't trigger any responses, to see if I can get a response from someone with hands-on experience with Captivate 9. I apologize for the noise, but I really need some input. The marketing information on the web is unclear at best, maybe misleading.
Original post:
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I've been unable to get a very clear answer about the following, and I hope that someone on this list has direct personal experience that can put my mind at ease.
A customer has insisted that we develop in Captivate 9, despite well-known (or at least reputed) shortcomings of C9 regarding accessibility. After our team developed a few screens I ran them through various tests and I believe that we have the following 508 non-compliance results. But perhaps we just do not know enough about C9 ? That's why I am hoping someone will read this and respond with what we have to do in order to satisfy accessibility requirements in general or 508 requirements in particular- or say "no way- cannot be done!"
What I have found:
1. No skip links are possible.
2. No H1... H6 headings detected by browser accessibility toolbars (tests). Screen reader (JAWS, NVDA) could not list headings.
3. ONCLICK events defined for TOC elements- and I think elsewhere, too- cannot be given a Role attribute.
4. Lists are apparent only as visually formatted elements but are not processed as lists by screen reader
5. Tables cannot be given headings (column and row headings) and screen reader cannot navigate tables as tables nor announce headings when reciting data cells.
Any and all real answers are welcome! I keep finding marketing-quality information about these matters, but I would like to hear from someone with hands-on experience, if that's possible.
Thanks in advance,
A
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Thanks,
Alan
From: Dominic Capuano (gmail)
Date: Mon, Nov 30 2015 7:18AM
Subject: Re: Captivate questions
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Hello Allan;
I have found that Captivate 9 output is not accessible "as is". I am able to
add accessibility with post processing. I will be posting a demo of this
shortly on my website. I will send you and this list a link shortly. In the
meantime if you have a sample course that you can send me I will apply my
methods to that for your review.
Dominic Capuano
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From: Moore,Michael (Accessibility) (HHSC)
Date: Mon, Nov 30 2015 7:49AM
Subject: Re: Captivate questions
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Hello Dominic and Alan,
I am working with some of our trainers right now on a project with Captivate 9 and although I was very skeptical going in about the accessibility of the output, I was quite surprised by the initial output - particularly since the training developer had not had any training in accessibility but had done some research and experimentation. I have noted a few problems that still need to be worked out.
1. Descriptions are being read for background images - I am assuming that these can be hidden fairly easily.
2. When the slide changes focus is still at the end of the flash movie so a screen reader user must navigate to the top of the page. - This is a common problem with FLASH and I am not sure that it can be overcome.
3. The operating systems high contrast settings are ignored (Windows). This is another FLASH specific issue. I am not sure that we can get around this one either.
4. There is not any structure - the developer minimized this impact through organization - there are not any tables and only a single topic or sub-topic is presented on a single slide so the lack of headings is not a serious issue.
Positive improvements that I observed in this training versus others that I have seen produced with previous versions of Captivate:
1. The reading order of the content was correct for every slide.
2. There were not a bunch of cryptic "buttons" that did not do anything.
3. Keyboard navigation worked cleanly when you were not using a screen reader, including a clear indication of focus.
Captivate 9 can also be published as HTML 5. I am interested to see if that resolves the FLASH specific issues that I have seen.
Dominic, can you share your techniques through this forum, a blog post or other means?
Mike Moore
Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)
From: Dominic Capuano (gmail)
Date: Mon, Nov 30 2015 9:12AM
Subject: Re: Captivate questions
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Michael;
Captivate 9 is the way to go. I have seen Captivate 8 output and it is completely unacceptable from an accessibility stand point.
My work has been solely based on Captivate 9 producing HTML5 output. I do not work with FLASH at this time.
The product that I am developing will allow the author to have semantic page structure and true list items, (ordered and unordered).
What I meant by post processing was that we take the Captivate output and correct some of the invalid output. For example the off-screen output for headings is a P tag. Post processing will convert this to H1, H2, etc.
A downside to what I am doing is that installing and using the software will require very advanced technical knowledge to implement. There are no techniques per se that the average author could use.
As I said to Alan I will be publishing a demo course shortly.
Dominic Capuano
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(h)401-726-2551