Accessibility Testing for FitFOL
I didn’t need to be told, but have known for a few years now: I know too little about disabilities.
What I do know is that they can cause students great stress when they impede with the generic access we provide to the physical spaces on our campus, to the academic content we choose to use in our courses and the tools we employ thinking they will assist our students in accomplishing the learning requirements.
Students and their different challenges have taught me lots, but there is still so much more to learn.
Inspired by a forum post to #FitFOL2020 course that highlighted how people with the following three issues: colour-blindness, photophobia, and dyslexia, can quickly be excluded if no consideration is given to
- the colour scheme
- the background
- the font.
The post made me wonder how our Pressbooks resource fares regarding these concerns, which is why I will be running a few tests using different technologies to find out how they can help students overcome some of the accessibility issues. I will be working on different devices as well.
This page is to document my Accessibility Testing for our FitFOL resources:
A. Ebook Readers:
- Caliber
- Freda
- IReader
B. Screen Readers:
- Microsoft Firefox and NVDA
- Safari and Voice Over
C. Interactive Content
- H5P Content (Accordion, Hotspots Images, Presentations, Video
- Caliber (Open-source software: GNU license)
- works with epub format
- carefully designed and easy-to-use interface
- well-labelled controls and tool tips
- can be kept portable on USB stick or other removable device
- cross-platform compatible
- can open Amazon AWZ files
Passes the test as all three issues above can be overcome. All of the three things above can be changed to liking and needs.
- the colour scheme
- the background
- the font
Problems: Interactive Content (anything created with H5P, video or audio files) are excluded from the reader and will have to be started directly on the Pressbooks resources
2. Freda
Freda is a free electronic book program, but with annoyingly blinking ads and not very user-friendly interface
(DRM-free) books in the supported formats: EPUB, MOBI, FB2, HTML and TXT.
- customisable controls, fonts and colours, plus annotations and bookmarks
- the ability to look up dictionary definitions and translations,
- and (new feature) text-to-speech reading.
- Freda understands EPUB formatting information (bold/italic text, margins and alignment) and can display images and diagrams in books.
1. Testing with NVDA for Windows
- NVDA (Download)
- NVDA Quick Reference and NVDA testing guide (Download .docx)
- Focus Highlight (Download NVDA add-in)
- How to use NVDA and Firefox to test your web pages for accessibility (Marco Zehe)
- Using NVDA to Evaluate Web Accessibility (WebAIM)
- Keyboard Shortcuts for NVDA (WebAIM)
Testing with VoiceOver for the Mac
VoiceOver for IOS and VoiceOver for the Mac are somewhat different, though in many cases, similar concepts apply. To learn more about testing mobile sites and applications with VoiceOver for IOS (as well as TalkBack for Android), visit the Mobile page on the SOAP site.
- Quick Guide to Using VoiceOver on Mac OS X (Victor Tsaran)
- Using VoiceOver to Evaluate Web Accessibility (WebAIM)
H5P
https://h5p.org/documentation/installation/content-type-accessibility
