Reader accommodation / Read aloud for Brightspace quizzes?

Emily.S.581

I'm hoping folk might have suggestions as to how to provide a reader accommodation for students taking online quizzes. Previously, we had used Read & Write's chrome extension with the hover speech function, however, it has stopped reading answers and only reads question headings. I have checked MCQ's with NVDA so I know it's a software issue rather than the page structure. To date I've tried most of the big hitters - ClaroRead, Natural Reader and the ReadSpeaker extension and keep running into issues. The latter, for instance, won't read answer options on drop-down menus. Has anyone found a consistent read aloud tool for Brightspace MCQ's? (I'm aware of the built-in option from ReadSpeaker, and we may consider it in the future!)

Michelle.T.865

Hey @Emily.S.581,

Thank you for your inquiry. Another Screen Reader you may be interested in is JAWS.

I will also link this course that offers information on Screen Readers in general:  https://community.desire2learn.com/d2l/home/18167 . In the Resources Topic, there is a list of other Screen Reader options available.

For more information, please see this Community article that highlights Screen Readers and Brightspace:  https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/2695-supporting-screen-reader-users  .

Please let us know if this is helpful.

Cheers!

Matt.C.408

Thanks @Michelle.T.865 for sharing that.

That course with information on Screen Readers: https://community.desire2learn.com/d2l/home/18167 still refers to Chromevox, which is very broken in 2023 (inside Brightspace, and outside, it's end of life'd).

NVDA also skips over a lot of Brightspace content. Meanwhile, many learners are choosing tools like Speechify speechify.com because of the quality and celebrity of readers. Both of these tools skip over content in areas with a lot of header/heading information like discussions.

In particular with Speechify, does anyone have experience or guidance with Speechify?