![]() If the interface is not coded this way, screen readers announce both the table-related information and the form-related information, which makes the interface extremely verbose and therefore extremely cumbersome for users to complete. Therefore, the best practice is to remove the table markup, either by using non-semantic elements such as instead of table elements, or by adding role="presentation" to table elements. However, functionally it isn’t a table it’s a form. The Likert question is presented visibly as a table.When testing with screen readers, we frequently experienced unexpected and inconsistent output with surveys created using these tools, which may be due to the quirky code. I’ll be exploring that code in detail in a presentation at the HighEdWeb conference on October 5 (see below for more details). As we studied the code behind their surveys, we often found ourselves completely puzzled as to why they had coded something the way they did. Both Qualtrics and Survey Monkey have quirky code, and screen readers are quirky in how they handle it.Then, they are, in a sense, reprimanded for breaking rules they didn’t know existed. In a Qualtrics survey, users have no idea which fields are required until they’ve submitted the form. There are many possible methods for communicating this information, the best being the HTML required attribute, which is well-supported by browsers and assistive technologies. It’s the only tool we tested that doesn’t at least place an asterisk (*) next to required fields. Qualtrics doesn’t seem to indicate whether fields are required (neither in the code nor in the user interface).If the user doesn’t learn about their mistake until after they’ve submitted the form, it can be challenging for them to (a) figure out what they did wrong, and (b) find their way back to the field that requires fixing. ![]() Client-side error checking is preferred since it provides immediate feedback if the user skips a required field or enters an invalid response. If WebQ, Qualtrics, or Survey Monkey have this capability, it wasn’t apparent when we were creating the test surveys. ![]() Google Forms and Microsoft Office Forms seem to be the only tools tested that do client-side error checking.Google and Microsoft produce the most accessible survey forms of the tools tested, although the amount of information provided to screen reader users may in fact be excessive (the forms became extremely verbose). (ARIA stands for “Accessible Rich Internet Applications” for more on its role in web accessibility, see Using ARIA for Web Applications). Both Google Forms and Microsoft Office Forms have highly sophisticated forms that use ARIA extensively for making complex relationships between a form field’s parts accessible to screen reader users.The following is a high-level summary of what we found: We also inspected the HTML code to see whether the code conformed to HTML standards and accessibility best practices, and we checked for other accessibility issues such as color contrast. We tested each form by attempting to complete it with the keyboard alone (no mouse), then Hadi Rangin, a full-time screen reader user, tested each form with both JAWS and NVDA (Windows screen readers). Users must select one item in each row (see screenshot below). A grid of Likert-scale questions, where each row contains the item to be rated, and each column contains a radio button on which to rate that item (i.e., “Excellent”, “Good”, “Neutral”, “Bad”, “Horrible”).For both of these questions, users must select at least one response. Two multiple-choice questions, one with one possible answer (radio buttons) and another with multiple possible answers (checkboxes).A date field of “Your birthdate,” with validation where available.Another simple text field of “Your email,” with validation where available.The latter would require using of the aria-describedby attribute. ![]() In order to be accessible to screen reader users, both the label and help text need to be explicitly associated with the input field. A simple text field of “Your name,” with supplemental instructions in addition to the label (“Enter your full name ).With each survey tool, we created a test survey that included the following form fields: To be sure we could confidently answer this question, the ATS IT Accessibility Team recently conducted a review of the following five tools, listed alphabetically: Here in UW-IT Accessible Technology Services (ATS), we are frequently asked which of the online survey tools that are commonly used at the UW produces the most accessible survey forms. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |