Screen reader navigation and tabbed navigator page queries

An experienced non-sighted screen reader has provided us (Open University Library) with some feedback where the behaviour of a Xerte created activity page was not expected or intuitive. They did say the activity was mostly accessible, but noted these issues.

Page change feedback
The activity was Evaluation using PROMPT which is an Open University Being digital activity (I tried to add a link but got the error message: As a new user your posts can not contain external URLs. Please include text only for your posts)
Screen reader navigation to the footer block navigation panel worked well and the role attribute (navigation=role) helped contextualise the action. What was more challenging is that on a page change (clicking > / next arrow), the screen reader was unaware of a content change. The use of single page applications often present challenges for screen readers. While they did realise what happened (being an experienced non-sighted screen reader), they advised that upon clicking next, focus should be returned to the top of the page/root of the content.

Tabbed panels
An experienced non-sighted screen reader user has also highlighted to us that tabbed panels often cause issues with screen readers and the Xerte Navigators – Tabbed navigator is one of the better implementations. However, the challenge that was encountered with this element was the screen reader couldn’t easily get to the panel content. Tabbing cycled through the letters in turn, without ever bringing the focus to the content in the panel. Their expectation was that the first tab would select the tab itself and the second tab would select the content. A following tab would then move to the next tabbed letter.
The example they look at is the same Evaluation using PROMPT activity

I tried to attach a screenshot, but was not able to.

I am interested in any feedback you have about these queries.

Kind regards

Geri

Hi Geri
thanks for your message and info. This is just a quick reply for now because I did some quick testing of what you have described with NVDA and Narrator but I'm certainly not any kind of expert in those two tools so wanted to get some of my colleagues to check too before we respond in detail.

Firstly is the resource you refer to www.open.ac.uk/libraryservices/beingdigi...ctivity/XK1087#page2 and that's obviously a direct link to the tabbed navigator page?

If so I can see that you are already using Xerte 3.9x which is good as we can test and respond with that version rather than an earlier version.

Did your users pick up the hidden instructions for screen reader users attached to the main contents landmark? There are lengthy instructions there that describe the structure of the page and how to navigate the tabbed content that should be read out by any screen reader software and certainly is in my testing. However what I'm not sure about is whether those instructions are still valid and still work for accessing the tabbed content or whether something has changed. We're investigating that and will respond again once we have done so including commenting on the page change feedback which I think is more straightforward.

HTH
Ron

Hi Ron

Thank you very much for looking into this. Yes, the link you've provided goes to the correct page.

The screen reader is guidance is easy to pick up, although the tabs didn't act as expected.
"This page contains a series of links where each one reveals some related information. This is information is provided as a tabbed panel where the selection of a tab changes the information presented. To select a tab: for JAWS click Enter twice and for NVDA click Shift-Enter"

Many thanks
Geri

Hi Geri

Many thanks for making us aware of the issue.
It's proving a bit of a puzzle. We have been able to replicate it so we know it's a real problem. What's less clear is that we had this page type tested by screenreader user several years ago and it worked so we're trying to track down what changed.

Could you please pass on the following to your user?
1) The Xerte developers team are really pleased to get feedback because none of us are expert screenreader users so this is very helpful.
2) We are following up by,
a. searching for older learning objects that have been saved locally so we can check how they behave in case a code change caused a break,
b. engaging the services of a blind accessibility engineer to help us identify the best improvements.

Any improvements we are able to make will be incorporated into the next release.

In the meantime, after a lot of experimenting we did find that the following gave access to the individual panels under the PROMPT initials so we offer it (apologetically!) as the best workaround we know about at the moment! These instructions are based on our experience with NVDA this morning!

1) Tab to the appropriate information tab.
2) Press Enter to select it.
3) Tab on until you leave the Tabbable area.
4) Use the up arrow and you should hear the text in the panel. Use up arrow to go to the beginning of the text where there’s a heading.
5) Use the down arrow to read it in order.

That was definitely not the planned reading experience but we’ll work on getting something better in place as soon as possible!

All the best

Alistair

Hi Alistair

Thank you very much for investigating this. I will pass your follow up actions onto our user and the work around for NVDA.

Hope it doesn't take too long to track down what's changed!

Best wishes

Geri

Hi Ron and Alistair,

Thank you again for looking into the Tabbed Navigator issue so quickly.

I wondered whether you've had a chance to look into the 'Page change feedback' query?

Best wishes
Geri