Quiz and Screen Readers
Hi, I have been looking for information about any quiz-taking accessibility tips or issues regarding Screen Readers. I'm not looking for tools like ReadSpeaker, I'm looking for users who access the quiz tool using their own screen reader software such as JAWS, NVDA, or VoiceOver. What guidance can we provide such students?
I found this page from Marquette, but the quiz tool has had a user interface update, so I don't know if it is accurate anymore.
Answers
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Hi @Renee.J.194! Great question! It's always a pleasure to reply to questions related to accessibility within Brightspace. You can review our recently updated Accessibility Standards to learn about how we are committed to ensuring all learners have access to the tools in Brightspace. There is also an article in Community about Accessibility Features for Screen Readers. Our resident accessibility expert also made this suggestion as it pertains to quizzes and screen readers: Each question has a heading, but the question text isn’t part of the label for the choices because some questions can be quite long. So, use your arrow keys to read the question’s text, then when you have read all the text of the question, if it is a multiple choice question, tab into the choices, make your selection, and escape out of the field so you can find the next question.
Does this help? Let us know if you have other questions!
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Thank you, @Lindsay.S.331 ! I expect that your tip for navigating the quiz questions will be extremely helpful. The story of the student who did not find quizzing accessible came to me third hand, with no details as to the technology or even the course, much less the specific issue. I may come back to this thread when/if I have more information. Wouldn't it be great if d2l tools had screenreader- and location-specific tool tips sharing guidance on how to make use of the tool! Or maybe they do and I don't know it, because I'm rubbish with a screen reader.
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Hi there. Sorry I was so slow to respond. I don't have a lot of tips for quizzing, but the headings tip and the one about reading question text out of forms mode are my biggest tips. Another one, which may or may not be relevant as screen readers evolve, is if you have a math question where there is math embedded in the multiple choice answer choices, you have to read them outside of forms/focus mode. Otherwise, the screen reader will read MathML code. Yuck! So, for example, if the question was "Which number is bigger?" and there were a series of fractions as choices and they were written with the equation editor, which is the way to go, if you read them in forms/focus mode, the code would be read instead of what it's supposed to say. I could have sworn I threw these things in the screen reader tips file, but perhaps I will have to check.
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Thanks, @Carin.H.549 that is super, super helpful.
