[Athen] Brightspace and Read & Write

Kate Deibel kndeibel at syr.edu
Mon Aug 3 08:32:17 PDT 2020


If you have JAWS or NVDA, then you should have Narrator as it’s built-in to the Windows Accessibility Tools.

Katherine (Kate) Deibel | PhD
Inclusion & Accessibility Librarian
Syracuse University Libraries
T 315.443.7178
kndeibel at syr.edu<mailto:kndeibel at syr.edu>
222 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244
Syracuse University

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Schwarte, David M.
Sent: Monday, August 3, 2020 11:13 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Brightspace and Read & Write

Hello Eric,

Thanks for the information. This question originally came to our instructional support folks and got passed along to me. We are in the unfortunate position of piloting Brightspace in the Spring 2020semester, transitioning from Blackboard during Summer 2020, and moving completely to Brightspace in Fall 2020. This was already a pretty aggressive timeline, long before most of our classes suddenly moved online. I was hoping the instructional support folks knew about this setting, but they do not. If you could get me the information that would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for the information on using both the Read & Write app and the Chrome extension. It sounds like our students are using the ScreenShot Reader at present, but it is a little slow and clunky. I actually did not do the testing with Narrator. I would have probably used JAWS or NVDA, since I have access to those screenreaders. Currently, my access to Brightspace is as an instructor, so it is probably best that I did not test. My results may have been different and less relevant to the student experience.

Thanks,
David Schwarte

From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Erik Ferguson
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 12:11 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Brightspace and Read & Write

Hi David. We use both Brightspace and Read and Write here at PCC. We are rather fond of the Chrome extension but the Desktop version is efficacious as well. For exams and quizzes we find that the “Screenshot Reader” feature is a good work around for this especially when a student discovers this issue mid exam. Depending on the version of RW you use there may be an additional extension to enable this feature. There is a bit of a lag associated with this tool so I always sort of promote it as a back up tool over the other TTS features but it works pretty well.

We have also found that, and my knowledge is not as thorough in this area, but there is an adjustment that the instructor themselves can make in the way that the exam is configured for individual accommodated students who need to use Brightspace with TTS/RW. It has something to do with enabling the ability to make selections of text such as you would for copying and pasting, which is frequently disabled to prevent students from extracting sections of the exam to share with others.

Your instructional support branch may know more about this or I am happy to check in with ours about altering these settings.

I would love to hear more about the way you use Windows Narrator in the Brightspace environment. I know that there have been vast improvements to this screen reader though it sort of remains on the outs with the AT community in comparison to applications such as JAWS NVDA and VoiceOver.


Best Regards,
Erik

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 10:49 AM Schwarte, David M. <schwarte at purdue.edu<mailto:schwarte at purdue.edu>> wrote:
Hello Everyone,

Our campus has recently started using Brightspace. Technically, Fall is the first semester Brightspace is not in pilot mode. Read & Write users are not able to have quizzes and exams read. The same quizzes and exams are readable via the Windows screenreader.

Has anyone found a solution to this issue? I also suspect Kurzweil 3000 may have a similar issues so I would be interested in solutions for that software as well. I am also interested in any workarounds, since summer finals are coming up very soon.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
David Schwarte

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Erik Ferguson
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