Lectora 18?

hello?

@jvalley4735 - are you still around / able to comment?

It's in development right now! So it'll still need to go through quality assurance and regression testing before it's released.

please, please, please test thoroughly! i have had a v17 license for a year now but have not been able to use it out-of-the-box to deliver accessible courseware due to issues with tab order (for keyboard-only users) and reading order (for screen reader users). i've got tickets in, even for v17.1.1, and could add custom code workarounds, but i'm still using v16.2.2 which is a much better tool for creating accessible content. i feel like i wasted a year of maintenance.

i, too, am a long-time Lectora user so i really hope future versions are worth the investment.

I know what you mean undefinedprg1792

The latest versions of Lectora brought Responsive Design and Seamless Play. These features (i feel) are spectacularly poorly implemented. I don't feel that my last couple of maintenance payments have brought anything of real use and in fact have made the stability of the core product worse.

undefinedjvalley4735 - are there any hints about what L18 might bring? What features are our maintenance payments funding?

any update on timescales / features of L18 @jvalley4735

is all very quiet.

Bump @jvalley4735

Keen to see / hear what my maintenance payment is getting me. Not much it seems.

http://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/a-gamechanger/

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that's 3 months since the first post in this thread. What can you tell us @jvalley4735

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Yep - we subscribe to this and it is definitely the way forward. An amazing suite of tools (Rise in particular is stunning though it does lock your content down meaning you need an active subscription to even edit a course). Was just keen to see if Trivantis had any plans to respond. Most of our content (100s of courses) has been developed in Lectora and we have 3 licenses on their maintenance plan. As it stands we are getting nothing from hemorrhaging this money each year and so will likely stop that and begin the transfer of content onto the newer, more progressive tools.

Jennifer, can you elaborate on what that means? I believe we deserve to know exactly what upgrades and fixes will be included instead of just announcing a new version. Additionally, what exactly triggers a new version as opposed to interim updates? The maintenance payments are not cheap, multiplied for those of us with additional licenses.

I'd like to see a direct comparison of Inspire vs. the other big player rapid delivery authoring tools. What will Lectora have to offer that they others do not? As of now, Inspire lags behind. It's time to wow us. I have already switched most of our projects to another application as the Trivantis sale is eerily reminiscent of the downfall of ToolBook.

What did the sale of Trivantis buy the end user because so far it looks like nothing.

I'll bet there are a lot of other fellow forum members that would like to know this information now?

According to a conversation last week version 18 is scheduled for this summer.

I’ll bet there are a lot of other fellow forum members that would like to know this information now?

Count me as one. I'm getting questions about what we're getting with Lectora that we can't get elsewhere, possibly for cheaper. It's also been asked more than once if we've picked the wrong tool for our content.

Darrel's post in another thread hit the nail on the head for what's needed:

Output should be web standard HTML5, CSS and JS. Responsive design should be handled using Grid.

Aside from saving myself the headache of creating SCORM packages manually and some accessibility-friendly automation, I feel like half the time I'm better off just writing content directly as HTML with CSS and JS in in Notepad++, rather than trying to get my custom stuff to play nice with Lectora's generated content.

Right now, Lectora's open ability to include custom HTML, CSS and JS is the sole selling point for me. Making that difficult because the overall implementation is outdated is killing that for me.

For others in my company with no experience with working with HTML/CSS and JS that are being called on to start working on e-learning content, they'll look for a more comprehensive e-learning software creation suite that doesn't require web-development knowledge to make good, interactive content.

I really hope the next version of Lectora can give it a jump start, I'm afraid we may also be on the path to going to other tools in the future like others already have if Lectora 18 is just another incremental update.

I appreciate your concerns and questions.

As far as releases go, we strive to offer major releases once a year (when the main version number changes) which include a variety of enhancements, new content, and bug fixes. However, we continually offer new features through point releases. For example, 17.1 included the introduction of the eLearning Brothers Stock Asset Library in Inspire, cmi5 support, improvements to xAPI, new publish options for mobile, and new options for audio and video. We also updated the framework use for Run and Preview mode.

On an ongoing basis, we also provide service packs to address widespread issues (both within the program and to keep up with technology standards) and as many bug fixes that are possible within a certain time frame.

Of course, our development process follows an agile methodology where multiple factors such as impact, customer demand, and scope are taken into consideration to prioritize and include in the release.

Not sharing specific information regarding features included in our next major version is how we maintain a competitive edge and also, since we are agile, accounts for the potential for priorities to change. However, I can tell you that Lectora 18 focuses specifically on improving ease of use and implementing often requested features. We’re looking forward to releasing soon, and will conduct a webinar (as always) to introduce each feature in detail.

If you'd like to make sure your suggestion is being heard and included we recommending writing up a request in the Trivantis Community, upvoting a suggestion made by a fellow developer, or submitting a bug to the Trivantis Support team.

You can view a great comparison of Lectora and other authoring tools provided by PCMag as well as a recent comparison conducted by Upside Learning. We believe that Lectora truly excels in a number of places against our competitors - from accessibility, to responsive course design, to the ability to extend and customize courses outside the box. The inclusion of ReviewLink, BranchTrack, Snagit, Camtasia, and the eLearning Brothers libraries offers incredible value.

I hope this helps to explain some of your concerns! If you’d like to chat further, I’m happy to set up some time to talk one on one. We truly value you as a Lectora client, and are committed to ensuring we’re providing a best-in-class solution for eLearning development.

Hi @jvalley4735

The PCMag review you refer to includes a review for Articulate Storyline, and then for Lectora, it basically says nothing, except that Lectora is just as good as Storyline, and we should give them both a whirl.

It does make it difficult to continue to argue for Lectora, and we're now almost half way through 2018, it will be interesting to see what's coming in the next release.

Regards

Amanda

 i am wondering how other users value these extra’s.

That's an excellent question, and I would think it's one Trivantis would want to know for their own purposes as well. I know I'm curious.

I can say that my experience has been that ReviewLink is a great service already, but with a few improvements could be truly indispensable for project collaboration. I could survive without it as it currently exists, half the people I need collaborate with only use it to preview content and then send their comments/requests via email or Excel spreadsheet. *sobs*

SnagIt is an amazing product, for a lot of general office work or documentation (my primary responsibility), not just e-learning. If you think all it does it takes screenshots, you're missing out on its full potential.

However, my office provides everyone with SnagIt, not just people working on e-learning. Anyone who needs it has access to Camtasisa as well (which is really just one person in our whole company). I've yet to touch BranchTrack or the eLearning Brothers' libraries, so I couldn't speak to those.

If there were a moderately discounted subscription package that included Lectora + maintenance package, ReviewLink, and nothing else, that's what we would almost certainly do. Like I'd said above though, I'd be curious to see a poll of how other Lectora user's utilize these extra products/services.

i am wondering how other users value these extra’s.

Review Link essential for my QA, as I have a number of partners and contributors. It's better than a SharePoint or other forum, since it has the ability for users to "point out" specific items on the screens.

Also, I have several uses for Camtasia and SnagIt, with some more minor uses for eLearning Brothers. Due to the nature of my current focus, I have not yet used BranchTrack.

• Camtasia: Quick hit video microlearning and conversion of WebEx sessions to video; creation of captions for export to audio files. If I need better editing power, I go to Adobe Premier.
• SnagIt: Quick screen shot and minor editing as well as video capture. If more complex editing is required, Adobe Photoshop comes into play.
• eLearning Brothers: Additional characters to better engage in a more "personal" experience

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If I ever move into topics that better lend themselves to a branching and/or "soft skills" design/development projects, I see Branch Track as a foundation and/or inspiration for those courses.

Math, as I am sure you already know, not only are there better tools that do just about all of those things, most are free. Therefore, sidekicks as you call them add little value and should not be mentioned with regards to the cost of licensing and maintenance. If they are part of it, take them all away and drop the prices in half; offer them a la cart. Buying Lectora for those extra's is like buying a car because its stereo has Apple Play.

What I'd like to hear/see in v18:

Fix any and all bugs

Add every feature that Storyline 3 has that is missing from Lectora Inspire

Add at least two new major features

Make all the other "would be nice" changes that have been requested over the years (asset names, etc.)

We were told that the acquisition of Trivantis by StoneCalibre would be good for Lectora. So far I'm not seeing it. What I am seeing is what happened with ToolBook when they were bought by SkillSoft.

Want sidekick alternatives?

ReviewLink - Use a test server with the actual LMS that runs on production. Then you'll be sure your work will run correctly on the LMS it will live on. Use a simple pdf form for reviewers to submit comments/changes. Yes, ReviewLink is convenient but it doesn't guarantee compatibility as well as the actual LMS would.

Snagit - Windows snipping tool

Camtasia - VLC or any other free screen recorder

BranchTrack - If/Then statements

Elearning Brothers - Google (or your favorite search engine) or a camera for images and some programming knowledge for their learning modules. This may be the only asset worth adding for e-learning authors who do not want to learn whats behind the scenes or who do not want to make sure images they find in a search are royalty free. By the way, it is simple to buy accounts without a rapid authoring app.

It would probably be a good marketing idea if Trivantis/StoneCalibre sent out a private poll to its users.

Trivantis needs to ensure Lectora 18 is bugproof and has features to wow and get users enthusiast. It is not enough only improving ease of use and implementing often requested features. Lectora 18 needs some great innovative features. Do check Framer ( https://framer.com/) e.g, a Mac only design and develop tool thats great for creating true responsive designs and mockups. One complaint i hear from clients and befriended developers is the amount of time it costs to create a multi-device course in Lectora. Designing and developing and testing for 4 views...taking 4x the time to realize... If that could be made in the way Framer works.

As a sidenote to Jennifer's statement.. 'The inclusion of ReviewLink, BranchTrack, Snagit, Camtasia, and the eLearning Brothers libraries offers incredible value.' i am wondering how other users value these extra's. I myself am glad with ReviewLink and all though i do use the rest now and then..i dont really need them. For me any extra effort into Lectora itself would be better then these sidekicks... Would love to see a voting/rating/poll option in the forum so we can indeed see how other users think about these things...

I agree with Math, it crossed my mind who would find those extras of value.

For me, I LOVE ReviewLink, it could be improved, but I love it anyway. I'd probably want to use it even if I wasn't using Lectora.

As others have mentioned, I use Camtasia and Snagit, but I would have licenses for those independently anyway, and I prefer using them outside of Lectora rather than built in.

Regarding BranchTrack and eLearning Brothers assets, I'm really not interested in those at all. They really remind me of the (cringe) early days of eLearning, and I NEVER want to use poses of people smiling, pointing, frowning etc in my designs, so I don't use those images from Lectora.

I would prefer better, simpler, more robust functionality from Lectora.

You can get Lectora without all these addons - it's called Lectora Publisher. It's still very expensive for what you get though (in comparison to the leading competitor). Lectora Inspire is the package that contains all of these extras.

I agree that Review Link is great though I have had quite a few issues with it of late.

Camtasia and SnagIt are phenomenal but I have them separately anyway.

I also have no real interest in Branch Track or eLearning Brother's assets.

I see my own thoughts reflected in the posts here. ReviewLink is appreciated. The rest of the sidekicks are not widely used and can be missed. Like Zachary i do have and use Camtasia and SnagIt outside the Lectora bundle, so no need for it bundled. I do think Trivantis should reconsider their policy on this. And as stated before a poll on the forum for topics like this would benefit both Trivantis and the usercommunity... well if Trivantis listens to its users ;-)

Lectora Inspire is the package that contains all of these extras.

Depending on when you purchased it, Inspire may have also had other benefits as well. For example, at least for my company, at the time we first purchased Lectora Inspire (and have since had a continuous maintenance package), we also got more slots for uploading content on ReviewLink than if you were to purchase Inspire today - according to the page listing features of Inspire, I believe it mentions Inspire currently entitles you to 50 slots for uploaded content on ReviewLink.

The cost of purchasing Lectora Publisher + ReviewLink's unlimited upload package is about what it would be to just get Inspire, which is probably why many just get Inspire if they know they'll want to use ReviewLink. And of course none of this includes the cost of the maintenance plan.

I don't know what the default number of items you can upload to ReviewLink for Publisher is though, so as of today it might be better to just do that like you said, if you don't need/want the rest and the amount of ReviewLink slots are sufficient.

Mmmm... i do have Inspire, and only have 4 slots for content in ReviewLink. Allthough i can manage with that, more would be nice.

Math Notermans said:

Mmmm… i do have Inspire, and only have 4 slots for content in ReviewLink. Although i can manage with that, more would be nice.

4!? Are you sure you have Inspire? Per the Trivantis FAQ:

How many content items can I host on ReviewLink?

Lectora Inspire users can host up to 50 active courses at no extra cost, and Lectora Publisher and Lectora Online users can host up to 10. If you need more space, you can choose to upgrade your subscription to in order to host additional items.

If you don’t have a Lectora or Lectora Online license, you can purchase ReviewLink separately to host Storyline and Captivate courses.

See: https://www.trivantis.com/products/reviewlink-e-learning-collaboration/faq

I've found ReviewMyElearning to be a nice alternative to ReviewLink - worth a look.

Yes i am sure. Doesnot bother me that much, since holding up 4 simultaneous projects in review-phase is enough for me ;-) But... its still weird indeed...

I don't use any of the extras and am not interested (we have alternatives that we are happy with). We only use Lectora Publisher, but are waiting for bug fixes in order to use v17.

I agree with Darrel - fix the bugs, update the core product to the level of Storyline 3, add new features (not add-on products). I just saw the press release for the Yet Analytics partnership. Great, but not helpful for someone just trying to use the core product.

So ... can someone (e.g. @jvalley4735) please answer the basic questions: Will there be a Lectora 18? When will it be available? What will it be able to do? and How much will it cost?

These questions got lost in the ongoing conversations about the product.

Like Darrel (@klaatu), I too am having reminiscences of Toolbook.

Cheers

@jvalley4735

As Andrew ( @mlap1 )states, i do have the same questions. Working with Online now, i do like it, but clients asking for options not available either in Online or Inspire without heavy scripting from me... End of this summer i do have to advice several clients what to use for their new courses. They are open to my advice, since i will do most of the development, but as it is now...neither Lectora Online nor Inspire fullfill their wishes good enough. Would love to tell them... oh wait, Lectora 18 is coming with this and this and this.... convincing them to use Lectora instead of some of the competition. But as it looks now, Adapt, Rise, Elucidat and H5P fit their wishes better.

Hi Jennifer (@jvalley4735), this is truly great news, especially about using Agile process of development, where Trivantis includes input from customers. I have made several relatively simple suggestions starting back in 2016 in version 16, none of these have been acknowledged (i.e. No feedback) and they have not been included in any updates.

Please advise, how does a customer ask for feature updates and/or much needed (relatively simple) changes?

Currently, a service pack is planned to come out (17.1.6) to address some bug fixes in the near future. Version 18 is scheduled for sometime between Q3 and Q4. The scope of the project was changed to include more beneficial content so the date was pushed back from my original "summer 2018" statement. In the next version, we hope to see community and user suggestions. The only thing I know for sure is some improvements to RCD which will mimic current functionality in Lectora Online. We appreciate your interest and understanding as we continue to use the Agile process of development to meet the needs of our customers, company, and regulatory matters.

undefinedjvalley4735

Thank you so much for your detailed reply. I have used the above mentioned forum to communicate, however, I have had no feedback on my suggestions/requests. Whilst asking fellow Lectora developers to like or comment on a suggestion is a good idea, the problem with that is one needs to know about the forum and request to be notified, I suspect that 90+% of community members just look for answers and post questions if they cannot find an answer to their issues, that said, some of my requests have been voted, liked and commented.

I also understand the process as I was part of the ToolBook development team on a few significant projects and was part of the Lectora version 17 testing team.

I know this is not the forum but here are the top three:

1. Ability to launch published titles locally without the need to re-publish.

   1. https://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/launching-local-content-without-lectora-editor/
   2. https://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/button-to-preview-published-content/

2. Publish Titles – Copy extern files last

   1. https://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/publish-titles-copy-extern-files-last/

3. Extra graphics created when publishing in Lectora 12 and through to 17

   1. https://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/extra-graphics-created-when-publishing-in-lectora-12/
   2. https://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/responsive-output-is-too-slow/
   3. https://community.trivantis.com/forums/topic/lectora-16-creating-to-much-images/

Please advise, how does a customer ask for feature updates and/or much needed (relatively simple) changes?

I monitor conversations and pick out suggestions or pinpoint issues. If it needs attention and you want to make sure it get's seen you can @ me like what happened in this thread. There is also a Lectora Suggestions forum, for both Lectora Inspire/Publisher and Lectora Online, where we recommend posting your suggested changes, as much background information as possible, and an example. Then your thread can be liked or commented on if multiple people are in agreement. Either myself or other members of the Trivantis team (Joe W likes to help me out when he has time) will review your post.

The information is shared with our development team. I personally have a meeting with our Product Manager on Thursdays. He also meets with members of support, marketing, and other departments to hear all audiences. We talk about what I'm hearing about in general and go over the newest suggestions/bugs/improvements are being talked about. From there the suggestion goes through a triage process. It's scaled on importance, we look at the impact it can potentially have on the existing product, who has the availability to make the changes, and how much work it'll take to complete. Among other aspects. Our end goal is to have a product that has a high impact on the front end and low impact on the back end.

This is me personally speaking, I know that last statement can sting. Especially when you've been struggling with issues to make things work. I was a developer before I joined the company and in my first job, I was literally in charge of giving my team a go/no-go on updating Lectora since we had auto-updating turned off and didn't want to disrupt on-going development (v10, 11, and 12). But please be assured we are doing our best in this complex technological landscape to take into account the most open-ended number of computers, browsers, and devices that we support.

Thank you so much for laying this out @pjackson2462 . I made sure to mention it in my weekly meeting with the Product Manager.

Thank you very much, I really appreciate this.

Thank you Jennifer @jvalley4735

jvalley4735 mentioned in January of 2018 with regard to the next iteration of Lectora. I'm assuming the question was targeted around v2018: "It’s in development right now! So it’ll still need to go through quality assurance and regression testing before it’s released." It is now mid-October and we have yet to see a v18 of Lectora. Any sign of an update? 2019 is 10 weeks away! We would like to see some significant updates and fixes to bugs... All bugs! We're to a point where we become very nervous when updates come around because there is a pattern of "other" things breaking when updates are released. Right now, I can't get a streaming video to play. Very frustrating. Thanks for listening!

This wednesday the New England Users Group has Darryl Fleary speaking at their meeting. He is gonna show ( i hope ) and talk about Lectora 18. So i do hope it will be out before the end of the year, and i do hope any new features will be worthwhile.

If you have general questions about the New England Lectora User's Group or about getting more involved, you can contact Laura Gillenwater, NELUG Chairperson at lagil@sunlife.com

It's in Beta as I type! The release is scheduled for next week. A webinar is being planned for the middle of November to discuss the changes.

In regards to the pushing back of the release, the decision was made to postpone the original summer release date in order to provide the most value to our customers. We know it's been a while since we've done a major release but minor updates were being made in order to address any hot ticket items. Thank you for your patience and we hope to have a great release.

Well, Lectora 18 is finally here with 14 'major' enhancements. Great to see the big one that i've been waiting for being included at last:

The product license key on the Getting Started screen is now selectable and can be copied and pasted into a Support ticket to ensure accuracy.

Release notes here: https://trivantis.com/inspire-e-learning-software/release-notes-18

Anyone else distinctly underwhelmed?

As i now use Lectora Online mostly i only can judge Lectora 18 by the announcement. What i read doesnot urge me to get Lectora 18. Lectora Online gets some updates too soon (announced in LO). Probably most of them to keep in sync with 18. Not impressed with the changes there either.. some more complex Javascript projects i have dont run after the update...so for sure several underthehood changes to HTMLnames or something like that are made... all in all nothing major changes for me.

Lectora 18 reminds me of someone in the surf at the beach with their arm up. If you listen you can hear them yelling "I'm not waving, I'm drowning!"

I’m not waving, I’m drowning!

Indeed. And I for one am not throwing them any more life rings (maintenance payments). Have thrown plenty in the past but they seem happy just to tread water.

@mallow76, @approg -

I read similar things each time a new version is released.

I'm unsure what is meant by "plumbing". If it means having legacy code that you don't want to fix because you are unsure what it does then I feel for you. Especially when a quick look at one of the js files (trivantis-button.js) turns up this

if (!this.name.indexOf("button") >- 1)

which would've been easier for a maintenance engineer to understand if it had been written

if (this.name.indexOf("button") == -1)

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One thing I can say in Lectora's defence is that perhaps they need to support all the way back to IE 6 (whereas all the people I deal with use modern browsers.) That would explain all the "invalid", deprecated, outdated code that Lectora publishes.

Lectora is almost 20 years old! We’ve always got some plumbing to do

And this is exactly the problem. Plumbing systems need replaced after that long not just continually patched. There are way more modern ways to do these things today. The Lectora of today (editor and output) is not vastly different to all those years ago. Instead of adapting to change (like your major competitors have), time and effort go towards things like VAAST and CenarioVR - both of which, as far as I can tell, are absolute flops.

Honestly I think I've felt the same as every one of these comments since v18 was released.

I am anxious to test v18 for accessibility. I have not used v17 for production at all due to all of its accessibility issues. Fingers crossed that v18 is truly fixed in that regard.

I really hope so, too. I've been adding accessibility features manually and it's been an exhausting pain. For my company, any and all content must be Section 508/WCAG 2.0 (AA) compliant. So for me, this one thing being fixed would be huge for making content faster and thus justifying the cost of continuing to use Lectora.

Storyline and Captivate are still ahead in features, ease of use, etc. As for Lectora as a whole, I do like that it is the only major tool to publish HTML content that uses objects recognized by the DOM. Both Storyline and Captivate publish HTML, but not in such a way that JAWS recognizes the structure. So a definite plus for Lectora.

Agreed, and remains the only reason I've pushed back at every opportunity when the subject of using something other than Lectora at my company has been brought up. It's less important to my co-workers who aren't familiar with HTML/CSS/JS, but for me it's the single most useful and defining feature of Lectora. I can generate decent tutorial slides for web quickly, and anything that Lectora can't do "stock" I can do with my own code.

However, the HTML that is published is far from good, even for simple things. Adding a margin to a text object results in an TABLE object wrapping the text with padding on the TD. Unordered sub-bullets are not written as nested lists. So plenty of cleanup that could still be done there.

Absolutely agree 1000% with this. Looking at some of the code trying to figure out just why Lectora is breaking really simple HTML objects and/or what it's wrapping my code in makes me want to cry sometimes. It's not particularly obfuscated compared to other code I've seen (generally), but it is often hard to work with and would benefit the end-users if it were a bit more modular in design (a tall order for an existing product and code as old as Lectora's, I know). I'd kill to be able to at least tweak or otherwise configure how Lectora handles integrating HTML object and associated code (e.g. I don't need accessibility features added to my HTML object when it's already got everything needed for that in its own code).

But I wonder what is the vision for Lectora? What is the direction of the tool, fixes aside? What’s the next major design move? (I don’t regard Vaast and CenarioVR as improvements to the core tool.)

This is the nugget right here for me. If Lectora's going to coast and only release more or less maintenance updates with very minor new features for new release versions, it's going to get surpassed by another product sooner rather than later. It's going to be hard to play catch-up with the product that does if the current user-base starts migrating. I know I won't be advocating for waiting around for Lectora to catch up if that day comes.

My goal is simply to make the best content I can with the least amount of work. Spending more time making sure Lectora hasn't broken my custom code/fixing it than it took to write it in the first place doesn't feel very productive, and there's simply no way to expect Lectora to offer every single feature I'd like such that adding my own code won't be necessary.

Do something simple like set the value of a variable to

javascript:return 'foo';

When you try to run the page it gives you a JavaScript error and the page freezes.

Whatever is the cause of the error is not the issue. The BIG issue is that Lectora doesn't sanitize the input so this type of error can't occur (basic computer science stuff.)

I am anxious to test v18 for accessibility. I have not used v17 for production at all due to all of its accessibility issues. Fingers crossed that v18 is truly fixed in that regard.

Storyline and Captivate are still ahead in features, ease of use, etc. As for Lectora as a whole, I do like that it is the only major tool to publish HTML content that uses objects recognized by the DOM. Both Storyline and Captivate publish HTML, but not in such a way that JAWS recognizes the structure. So a definite plus for Lectora. However, the HTML that is published is far from good, even for simple things. Adding a margin to a text object results in an TABLE object wrapping the text with padding on the TD. Unordered sub-bullets are not written as nested lists. So plenty of cleanup that could still be done there.

But I wonder what is the vision for Lectora? What is the direction of the tool, fixes aside? What's the next major design move? (I don't regard Vaast and CenarioVR as improvements to the core tool.)

I'm already seeing accessibility issues with the output of v18. Still testing, so I do not have a complete report yet, but disappointed so far.

What have you found so far?

I'm in the final stages of a project we're preparing to publish to an LMS and I will need to do an accessibility compliance (Section 508) check. I'm really hoping at least my "custom" accessibility fixes didn't break...

I tested a version of my courseware, so this is not necessarily an exhaustive list. I have submitted these to the WCAG team, and got an immediate reply that these would be looked at right away.

Here is what my testing showed...

Keyboard-only:

1. The visual indicators for focus are not visible if the object is on top of another object. The box-shadows draw as the bottom-most layer behind everything else. For a workaround, I used the trivantis-focus.css provided with v17 which includes an outline definition that gives a visual indication of focus.
2. There is no focus indicator visible for transparent buttons which tend to be on top of other objects (same box-shadow issue as above). To fix, I edited the HTML file to set the opacity of the surrounding DIV to be 1 instead of 0.01. That shows the outline defined in the v17 trivantis-focus.css.
3. Audio DIV container has tabindex=0 instead of -1. For a workaround, I edited mediaelement-and-player.js line 2439.

Screen Reader:

1. An HTML extension object (custom DIV) is incorrectly written to the top of the HTML instead of with the page objects where it should be. To fix, I edited the HTML file to move the object.

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