[Athen] My latest letter to Pearson

[Thomas Kearns]

I want to personally thank you for exposing these issues and then sharing
what you have found.


*Thomas Kearns*
Assistive Technician / Accessibility Specialist ATACP
Office of Disability Resource Center
Truckee Meadows Community College
7000 Dandini Blvd. (RDMT 122)
Reno, Nevada 89512
Wk: 775-673-7209  Fax 775-673-7207
Email: tkearns at tmcc.edu
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE


On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 1:47 PM Deborah Armstrong <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>
wrote:


> I submitted the following under my case number so they already have the

> textbook and class IDS:

>

>

>

> I am finishing up my seventh week using MySpanishLab with a screen reader

> and have found workarounds for some of the problems I previously reported.

> I will list them below, but first, my biggest issue currently is that I

> still haven’t been able to complete any of the drag-and-drop exercises.

> Week 7 has five I have encountered so far.

>

>

>

> In previous communications I was told not to press control and tab

> together; the instructions for all these exercises are consistent and they

> tell me to use tab to navigate to an item and control to drag it.

>

>

>

> Please explain how I’m supposed to use control to drag without using a

> mouse! If I navigate to item A with the tab and press control nothing is

> going to happen. If I hold control while I try to use tab to navigate to

> where I want to drop it, I’m effectively pressing control-tab which changes

> the browser focus to a different browser tab.

>

> Tab navigates from one link to the next. Even if it does navigate me to an

> object I need to drag, I find no way to actually transport that object to

> the drop location using the keyboard.

>

>

>

> Screen readers allow the user to navigate through a page using a variety

> of keystrokes, but the only way to move through a page using just keyboard

> commands is the tab and shift-tab key, unless the web designer added

> special keystrokes for doing so, such as in Office 365 online. Facebook and

> twitter also have extra keystrokes for navigating. But these instructions

> only mention using control, which I could hold down all day without

> anything on the page changing.

>

>

>

> We either need to admit these exercises are inaccessible, or I need a

> clearer set of instructions such as

>

>

>

> 1)      Press ___ to navigate to a chosen object.

>

> 2)      Press ____ to initiate a drag operation.

>

> 3)      Press ____ to navigate to where the object is to be dropped.

>

> 4)      Press ____ to drop the object.

>

>

>

> It would be helpful instead of simply hearing that Pearson’s tester did

> not have problems with these pages to actually communicate with someone

> familiar with screen readers who can explain how to perform the drag and

> drop on the lab exercises. As I’ve explained before, it’s not a problem

> with the tutorials, where one presses alt-5 to initiate a drag operation

> and alt-enter to drop the object. That was documented accurately though

> clumsily. (I did try alt-5 and alt-enter of course on the lab exercises

> which apparently were created by a different web designer as they didn’t

> work either!)

>

> Now for the workarounds.  Though the exercises still sometimes have maps

> or drawings that are not described completely enough for a sight-impaired

> user to complete the exercise, I’ve found in the accessible textbook that

> some graphics have longer descriptions. I missed this at first, because to

> be more effective in the classroom I’d saved the required pages to my PC

> and was reading them offline. I discovered that if I am reading a page

> online and click on a link labeled simply “D”, a longer description appears

> – because a secondary page loads. This doesn’t happen if one is viewing the

> page offline. This needs to be documented “In order to view this

> description you must be online” or some such. You can imagine that not

> every classroom might have a fast internet connection so a student is

> likely to save pages to their laptop to read offline.  A page saved offline

> will not have access to the long description and clear documentation would

> have saved me hours of frustration!

>

>

>

> I have also located the textbook audio, practice audio and textbook video

> under three tabs under downloadable materials under optional review

> activities. I understand these are directly linked to in the inaccessible

> (image-based) textbook but not in the accessible (text-based) version of

> the textbook. So I can access this content, I just needed a few weeks to

> discover it was also available under “optional review activities”.

>

>

>

> Again, this should be documented so the sight-impaired user can quickly

> and easily locate this important content.

>

>

>

> It seems like many problems I experienced doing the labs and reading the

> textbook could have been fixed by a competent technical writer simply

> spending a few hours documenting how to use the accessible materials. It’s

> even possible the drag and drop is keyboard accessible and only good

> documentation is needed to clarify how to use it!

>

>

>

> As a textbook publisher, Pearson should be able to round up a writer to

> improve this situation!

>

>

>

> --Debee

>

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

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>


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