[Athen] Looking for feedback on Whova

Terrill Thompson tft at uw.edu
Tue Nov 17 11:22:04 PST 2020


Hi Kate,

We provided Whova with a detailed summary of the most pressing
accessibility issues in their web app (e.g., no headings). I met with a rep
to explore each of these issues in depth and he forwarded them on to the
engineering team, but they were unwilling to commit to a timeframe for
fixing any of their problems. As you mentioned, we created a userscript to
fix the problem ourselves:
https://github.com/terrill/whova-a11y-fix

Without the userscript, Whova is completely inaccessible (again, they don't
even use headings, and some of their key interactive elements can't be
accessed at all without a mouse, among other issues). The mobile app is a
bit more accessible than the web app, but it too has problems.

The userscript was created based on the Whova AHG experience. There's no
guarantee it will work with another Whova conference that's setup
differently and/or uses different features. If you end up using Whova
though, feel free to try it (and assign someone with JavaScript skills the
task of improving it).

If your conference organizers are still considering alternatives, these
might be worth a look:

- Hopin <https://hopin.com/> - this was used by HighEdWeb. I did very
limited accessibility testing of this tool, and was impressed with what I
saw. It had ARIA landmarks, good heading structure, labels on form fields,
and ARIA in various places that made it clear they were paying attention. I
talked with a colleague though who uses a screen reader and had nothing
good to say about Hopin based on their experience at another recent
conference. It's possible that accessibility is a new focus for Hopin, and
the accessibility features I observed had been added in between our two
conferences. I definitely would consider them, and engage them in a
conversation about accessibility.
- Crowd Compass <https://www.crowdcompass.com/> (from CVENT) - I have no
firsthand experience with this but I've heard some good things about it
from colleagues, and (I think) the NFB used them for their summer
conference.
- Clowdr <https://clowdr.org/> - I have no firsthand experience with
this but I heard from a credible colleague that it has "numerous minor
accessibility issues, but no showstoppers." It was created by academics and
they reportedly are motivated to ensure full accessibility.

Regards,
Terrill

---
Terrill Thompson
Manager, IT Accessibility Team
UW-IT Accessible Technology Services
University of Washington
tft at uw.edu


On Tue, Nov 17, 2020 at 9:14 AM Kate Deibel <kndeibel at syr.edu> wrote:


> I’m assisting a conference plan its virtual hosting for this year’s

> conference. I’ve managed to push them away from Remo and now they are

> looking at Whova. I know that AHG is using Whova this year. Although I’m

> not in attendance, I’m aware that some accessibility fixes had to be done

> via custom JavaScript.

>

> Any opinions on the Whova accessibility experience will be appreciated. In

> particular, if you’re willing to chat with our conference organizers, that

> would be great!

>

>

>

> *Katherine (Kate) Deibel* *| PhD*

> Inclusion & Accessibility Librarian

> Syracuse University Libraries

>

> *T* 315.443.7178

> kndeibel at syr.edu

>

> 222 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, NY 13244

>

> Syracuse University

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> athen-list mailing list

> athen-list at mailman12.u.washington.edu

> http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>

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