By Barry Dahl – October 7, 2016
Third post in a series of #a11y for online educators.
This is the third blog post in a series of posts intended to help online educators improve the accessibility of their online courses. In this installment, we’ll continue to look at the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) that was discussed in the previous post. ***
What does the VPAT Tell You?
The VPAT is a series of tables, each comprised of three columns. The Summary Table provides the vendor’s information related to conformance with Section 508 Standards of the United States Rehabilitation Act. Column one of the Summary Table contains eight accessibility criteria that are found in subparts B and C of the 508 Standards. Column two describes any supporting features in the product or service that helps conform to the individual criterion. Column three is for any remarks and explanations that the vendor would like to share.
The subsequent tables provide details about each of the eight criteria, unless the vendor indicates that the criterion is “Not Applicable.” For example, the fourth criterion is “Video and Multi-media Products.” If the product or service in question doesn’t use video or multi-media, then there will not be a detailed table for that criterion. If instead, the product does have features that are “Web-based Internet information and applications,” the second criterion on the list, then there would be a supporting table of detail for that item.
That probably doesn’t sound very exciting, so let’s take a look at a few examples. The company names are not included, but I encourage you to check out the VPATs for technology products that you typically use.
VPAT Example #1
Example #1 comes from a web conferencing solution.
The detail table for Section 1194.22 Web-based Internet information and applications includes the following (excerpting criteria a, c, and g as examples):
Criteria: (a) A text equivalent for every nontext element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content).
Supporting Features: Supports with Exceptions
Remarks and explanations: The product interface itself does not have any deficiencies requiring this, and authors are urged to do so should the need arise.
Criteria: (c) Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup.
Supporting Features: Supports
Remarks and explanations: All color contrasts comply with industry standard minimums.
Criteria: (g) Row and column headers shall be identified for data tables.
Supporting Features: Not Applicable
Remarks and explanations: The product does not contain any data tables.
Row (a) contains something that you’ll see quite frequently; the vendor saying that their product doesn’t have accessibility issues with a criterion, but content loaded by the end user just might. It’s always important to differentiate between product features and items added by the end user.
VPAT Example #2
Example #2 comes from the D2L VPAT for the Learning Environment.
The detail table for Section 1194.21 Software Applications and Operating Systems includes the following (excerpting criteria f, h, and k as examples):
Criteria: (f) Textual information shall be provided through operating system functions for displaying text. The minimum information that shall be made available is text content, text input caret location, and text attributes.
Supporting Features: Supports
Remarks and explanations: HTML mark-up is used for the majority of system components. Equations authored in D2L’s Equation Editor are stored as MathML and output as HTML and CSS across all supported browsers.
Criteria: (h) When animation is displayed, the information shall be displayable in at least one non-animated presentation mode at the option of the user.
Supporting Features: Supports
Remarks and explanations: Essential animations (per WCAG 2 – 2.2.2) are provided to give feedback about loading progress. The title and alt text of the image updates while loading.
Criteria: (k) Software shall not use flashing or blinking text, objects, or other elements having a flash or blink frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz.
Supporting Features: Supports with exceptions
Remarks and explanations: The user interface does not contain content that flickers. Exceptions: Users control their own content.
When reading a VPAT, it’s important to look for information that may impact both the technology user/creator as well as the output consumer, if both parties might be affected. For example, consider a technology that creates captions for videos. It is important a) that the person using the software to create captions can do so with full accessibility controls, if needed, and b) that the person watching the video is able to access the captions that have been created for their consumption.
In an educational context, this boils down to the following: a) is the technology accessible to the instructor or student who needs to create educational content, and b) is the output of the technology accessible to users/viewers of said output?
What to Do After the VPAT
At many colleges and universities, vendor VPATs are used as a first step to verify the accessibility of the technology (both software and hardware) that will be purchased or recommended for use by students and employees. This is only a first step, because it is a wise choice to do some additional end-user testing to verify the information contained in the VPAT. For example, consider a software product that indicates in the VPAT that text included in an object created by that software is readable by assistive technology such as a screen reader. It would be a good idea to test that yourself using the screen reading technology that is normally deployed at your organization.
Karen Sorensen of Portland Community College (PCC) shares the following about how her college conducts accessibility testing:
“Disability Services hired two graduate students who use screen readers extensively, to do screen reader testing with us. We can’t possibly do an in depth, definitive test on the accessibility of each product, but we try to test what a student in the course will need to access. We hope to hire a keyboard only tester but currently Supada, the Alt Media Specialist for Distance Education and I do the keyboard only testing, magnification tests and color contrast testing on 3rd party products used in online courses.”
More information about the PCC process, and what to do if your desired software is inaccessible, check out the WAMOE content page “After VPAT.”
In the previous post I suggested web searches as ways to find a VPAT for a technology that you use in education. There are also a few websites that give lists of links to VPATs or where they do their own accessibility testing. A few sites I recommend include:
- The Web2Access site provides lots of good information about the accessibility features of many commonly used web-based tools. They perform accessibility tests on many platforms and report out on their findings. Currently, the tested products are categorized by type of activity.
- The Center on Online Learning and Student with Disabilities provides a Purposeful Sampling of Technologies Employed in K-12 Online Education. This list contains links to VPAT info, or other non-VPAT accessibility info published by various companies.
- The U.S. General Services Administration published the Section508.gov website.
- The W3C Accessibility testing website contains lots of useful information about testing the web accessibility of a site or application.
Next week we’ll look at making graphics and photos more accessible to students with reduced or no vision.
Accessibility Posts - October-November 2016
- Setting the Stage for Improving Accessibility of Online Courses
- What is a VPAT and Where Can You Find Them?
- What Value Can You Find in a VPAT?
- Alt Text for Web Page Images
- When Simple Alt Text is Insufficient
- Finding Captioned Videos for Your Online Courses
- Creating Captions for Your Online Course Videos
- Four Easy Wins to Make Your HTML Content Pages More Accessible
- Three More Ways to Improve Accessibility in your Brightspace Courses
- Creating Accessible Course Content in Microsoft Word
- Creating Accessible Course Content in Microsoft PowerPoint
- Six More Tips for Making Online Courses Accessible
Much of the content in this series of posts comes from WAMOE, the Web Accessibility MOOC for Online Educators; co-created by Karen Sorensen of PCC and Barry Dahl of D2L.
