Lectora 508/JAWS/Keystrokes?
February 3, 2007 12:00 AM
I must defend Lectora for a moment...Ultimately, Lectora can't deal with screen readers. There's 10,000 of them, all with their own commands. For 508 "stuff" we have to realize that whatever we do in Lectora will be translated through the screen reader, whichever that one is. In Lectora, we can't override the Accessability tool that the users are using. We just have to find workarounds.Granted, it would be nice if there was some communication between Lectora and leading Accessability Product Manufacturers, especially since Trivantis is really playing up their 508 compliance.For example, the response from Aaron (love you, dude) above: Here is Freedom Scientific's Solution: "You can turn off Navigation Quick Keys temporarily by typing INSERT+N, but it will be turned back on with the next page load (following any link, or manually or automatically refreshing the current page). You can turn it off permanently in a JAWS configuration dialog." This turned out not to work at all. I was forced to contact Freedom Scientific directly about the method to turn off the Keystrokes in JAWS. They gave me a quite different response that was actually much simpler.Once again, it would have been appropriate to have Trivantis do this research and document it before waving their 508-friendly flags. In our VERY EXPENSIVE Trivantis-supplied 508 training, there was no mention at all about conflicts between Lectora and screen readers, and we actually got the impression that they were sort of "guessing" at was and what wasn't a good idea to do.It is my guess that Trivantis is learning this at the same speed as we are, and we as a community are going to be the ones doing the job of setting standard practices for Lectora and 508 compliance.Unfortunate, but hey- I'd do the same thing if I were them. It's much cheaper to have paying customers do your bug-checking and evaluations than doing it internally.Once again, I feel Lectora kinda jumped the gun on the 508 flag-waving, but it is by far the best and easiest tool to use for creating any sort of e-learning.So I guess this post was sort of a classic example of a back-handed compliment. Sorry if I offended any Trivantis folks.JoePS- I'll come back later and re-read this post and see if I was boing too harsh, but I don't think I was.Edited By: CDC_Joe on 2007-2-7 14:7:15
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