[Athen] Elluminate - accessibile or not?

[Sean Keegan]

 > Is anyone familiar with the product called Elluminate Learning Suite?

The CA community college system adopted Elluminate about a year or so 
ago.  The version 9 system was an improvement over their previous 
versions in terms of accessibility.  There are still  some issues, but I 
do not know if some of those issues will ever be resolved with how 
current technologies are progressing (e.g., making Whiteboard interface 
fully accessible to screen-reader, etc.).

One thing that I did not have a problem with was the audio issues and I 
wonder if it may have had to do with how Elluminate provides audio 
support.  In the CA community college implementation, audio support was 
initially provided through a phone bridge - participants did not use the 
voice-over IP solution (VOIP) in Elluminate.  I basically set my audio 
volume to zero in Elluminate and everything was fine when testing with 
screen-readers (I did not allow Elluminate to control my audio 
settings).  That being said, there has been an attempt to move to VOIP, 
but I am/was not part of that testing solution.

You can also configure the interface to different layouts that can 
reduce the number of "regions" on the screen.  That may be useful 
depending on which features and functions that are being used in the 
presentation.  Two things I did like about Elluminate was that you could 
download a copy of the real-time caption file (if the presentation was 
being captioned) as well as a copy of the presentation itself.  If there 
was a need to make an alternate format of the content, this would 
simplify the process.

I believe NC State looked at the accessibility of several different 
platforms a few years ago; it was a presentation at CSUN in either 2005 
or 2006.  I do not know if they have continued its implementation but I 
do know they were involved in accessibility related feedback.  While it 
certainly had some access issues, my experience was that it did some 
things well and other areas it needed improvement.

Take care,
Sean