TOPIC:

If you (or your IT team) upgrade Xerte Toolkits to the latest version you'll have a colour changer button on the bottom bar to give some instant accessibility options as well as a link to a much more detailed acecssibility statement for users and accessibility guidance for authors.
Latest version of Toolkits is in the resources section - click the Resources tab at top of page or click this link to go to the downloads area .

Hi Alistair,
The color changer button in my footer works fine with my upgrade (v2.1) and I find it simple enough to change colors but for some LOs I would like to hide it. Do you know how I can remove it from the footer?

Mark

Hi Mark
I'm not meaning to be cheeky here but my question would be "Do you have the agreement of all your print impaired learners to remove it?".
You'd need to check on the technical / developer fora to find out how to take it out but I think you need to weigh up the risks. If a disgruntled print impaired learner realised you'd deliberately removed an accessible feature to their detriment you would be skating on thin ice in terms of Equality Legislation. If you were to remove it I'd strongly advise you provided some alternative guidance on the first page of your LOs so learners weren't being disadvantaged.

If you are really sure you want to do this, create a stylesheet with the folloing in it:

and add the stylesheet to the LO (optional parameter stylesheet)

Alistair,
Thank you for your suggestion about impaired learners. You raised a really important point that hadn't crossed my mind. The LOs I'm working on are directed to an industrial type setting and would be unlikely to have learners with vision impairments.
I find the color button a great option but also a bit of a distraction if it's not needed. I think it would be better if it was added the same way as the Glossary and Help buttons are from the Options Properties drop down instead of being fixed.

Tom,
I created a stylesheet,(colourBtnOff.css) as you wrote. I added the stylesheet option to my main LO page (first on the list) from optional properties drop down. It added as "FileLocation + 'media/colourBtnOff.css'" but has no effect. I cleared the cache and still no effect. I also tried to add it to the LO project file, parent_template/Nottingham/common, common_html5, even mainStyles.css just about anywhere I could think of.... I'm quite a novice at this so I know I'm missing something.
The basic objective is to remove the button from the footer of the LO or as I stated above make it an Options Properties addition.

Thank you for your help

Mark

Hi Mark
For clarification the colour changer button is as likely to be used by dyslexic people as visually impaired and it also links directly to all the advice on changing font size etc that a range of users might need. 10% of the population are reckoned to have dyslexia and age related sight loss kicks in around 40 and research by Forrester suggests 50% of the work force benefits from assistive features in technology I suspect many more people would benefit from the button than you might suspect... but only if they knew it was there :-)

As a user centred design principle I think it's generally preferable that people have more personalisation options rather than less. You could - of course - argue that they can do all those changes through the browser but few people realise and fewer still know how to. And an accessibility statement is considered basic good practice so removing one would need some justification. Obviously you make your own decisions but if you go ahead with removing an inbuilt accessibility feature you would be wise to document your justification. Otherwise you could be on dodgy (and expensive) ground if challenged by a dyslexic or visually impaired user who was aware of their rights and had come across other Xerte LOs with the buttons intact. Hope that helps. I'm not trying to be bossy but these things are worth considering and author/developer choices should enhance personalisation wherever possible. Alistair