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Thread: Labelling multi-answer questions
Number of posts in this thread: 3 (In chronological order)
From: lynn.holdsworth
Date: Wed, May 16 2018 4:41AM
Subject: Labelling multi-answer questions
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Hi guys, I'm auditing an HTML authoring tool that enables authors unfamiliar
with HTML to create exam questions. The UI is really flexible in that it's
possible to create all manner of question types including a "fill in the
blanks" type scenario.
The sort of question I'm talking about might look something like:
How far away is the Sun from the Earth, and how many planets are closer?
The Sun is __ million miles away from Earth, and there are _ planets closer.
Where the underlines are replaced by small textboxes.
If we were marking up the question by hand, I'm sure we could come up with
some sort of fudge. But the solution needs to be flexible enough to build
into the authoring tool.
The best I can come up with is to use the immediately preceding text node as
the label for each textbox. But in this question neither label would provide
enough information.
I'd really appreciate any help I can get with this one. Aria labels are
currently being used, both of which say "Numeric answer text", which is
likely to be very confusing indeed.
Thanks as always
From: glen walker
Date: Wed, May 16 2018 10:19AM
Subject: Re: Labelling multi-answer questions
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Nice timing. We discussed this issue a few weeks ago. You can see the
entire thread on https://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread†93
Also keep in mind that you have an "authoring tool" so ATAG will also
apply, https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/atag/
ATAG has two parts
1. making your tool, itself, accessible
2. allowing the user to create accessible content with your tool
Glen
On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 4:41 AM, < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Hi guys, I'm auditing an HTML authoring tool that enables authors
> unfamiliar
> with HTML to create exam questions. The UI is really flexible in that it's
> possible to create all manner of question types including a "fill in the
> blanks" type scenario.
>
>
>
> The sort of question I'm talking about might look something like:
>
>
>
> How far away is the Sun from the Earth, and how many planets are closer?
>
>
>
> The Sun is __ million miles away from Earth, and there are _ planets
> closer.
>
>
>
> Where the underlines are replaced by small textboxes.
>
>
>
> If we were marking up the question by hand, I'm sure we could come up with
> some sort of fudge. But the solution needs to be flexible enough to build
> into the authoring tool.
>
>
>
> The best I can come up with is to use the immediately preceding text node
> as
> the label for each textbox. But in this question neither label would
> provide
> enough information.
>
>
>
> I'd really appreciate any help I can get with this one. Aria labels are
> currently being used, both of which say "Numeric answer text", which is
> likely to be very confusing indeed.
>
>
>
> Thanks as always
>
> > > > >
From: IL Holdsworth
Date: Thu, May 17 2018 2:07AM
Subject: Re: Labelling multi-answer questions
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Thanks Glen. It was me who started that thread, and the discussion proved very useful indeed.
Our authoring tools don't conform to ATAG, and I'm not likely to be able to make that happen any time soon. But even with the best will in the world, it would require some complicated heuristics to guess at the labels for a multi-answer question.
In the last conversation, Tim suggested using "Fill in the blank" as a ARIA label, and so far that's been the easiest and most effective solution to implement. But it won't work for WCAG 2.1, so I'm trying to come up with a solution that will.
I'm getting there!
Thanks again.