Accessibility
Compendium has been tested under Windows XP Pro, with ZoomText v8.1 (magnifier), Dragon v8 (voice recognition), Windows display setting ‘High Contrast #1 large’ (black background, white and yellow text with large font), Jaws v7 (screenreader). Exported content has been tested with Internet Explorer v6.
We would like to thank Dr Chetz Colwell, who is part of the Accessibility in Educational Media team at the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University, for her work in testing the Compendium application for accessibility and for identifying areas where we could make improvements.
We have implemented many of her recommendations for this release and we will continue to add further improvements in future releases.
Keyboard AccessThere are keyboard shortcuts for most facilities in Compendium.
Below is a list of keyboard shortcut pages describing the keyboard access for different areas of the application.
Note: The first option below is a page taken from the Sun website and describes general keyboard access for user interface components written in Java (which this application is) such as menus, buttons, trees, lists, tables etc. The next four pages detail keyboard options specific to the Compendium application.
Windows MouseKeys: It is possible to operate most functions using Windows MouseKeys. There are currently some mouse operations that are not possible with MouseKeys, such as performing operations on multiple nodes. For example, it is not possible to use the shift+right-click+drag to create multiple associate links using MouseKeys. You need to add the links individually on each node to achieve the same outcome. We will be investigating how to address this issue in future releases of Compendium.
HTML Interactive Maps Export
Interactive maps have a menu in the left-hand frame which can be tabbed around. The icons in the right-hand frame can be tabbed to and opened.
HTML Outline Export
The outline export pages can be tabbed around and interacted with as with normal HTML pages.
Screen MagnifiersZoomText v8.1 was used for screen magnification testing.
Compendium Application
When tested, all aspects for authoring and reading maps were magnified correctly and all aspects responded well to the reverse video setting.
However, one effect was that the colours of the relationship arrows were changed.
To help with this issue we recommend that you use link labels. You can edit the default IBIS link group to add labels displaying the link type which would be added to all the links you then created automatically. You can also create your own link groups with your own link colours and labels if required,
(see Link Groups for more information).
If you imports someone else’s map with no link labels on, there is an option on the link right-click menu to ‘Label With Type’ which would add the link type name as the link’s label to all selected links.
HTML Interactive Maps Export
All aspects were magnified correctly and responded well to the reverse video setting.
HTML Outline Export
All aspects were magnified correctly and responded well to the reverse video setting.
Voice RecognitionDragon v8 was used for voice recognition testing.
Compendium Application
It is possible to dictate some shortcuts, e.g. “press Alt plus M” and to dictate into text fields, and to click and drag the mouse.
To use the menus you currently have to have to say “press Alt and F” rather than 'File Menu'.
There are problems with clicking and dragging with the right mouse button, and with mis-recognitions.
In the future we will investigate whether toi mplement the Java Speech API to handle voice recognition in Compendium or if improvements can be made for its interoperability with Dragon.
HTML Interactive Maps Export
Dragon is not able to operate the interactive map export due to the use of scripting for links. Currently it is not possible for us to make the links plain hrefs without losing the interactivity. It is recommended that people wanting to use Voice recongition with our HTML exports use the Oultine export instead.
HTML Outline Export
Dragon was able to operate the HTML outline export content without problems.
ScreenreadersJaws v7 was used for screenreader testing.
Compendium Application
At present the Compendium user interface is not operable with a screenreader because it is a Java application and has not been developed to work with the Java Access Bridge (JAB).
The Java Access Bridge would only work on the Windows platform and we are uncertain as to whether the Compendium interface is too visual to be used effectively by a screenreader even if we where to implement JAB.
The use of screenreaders with Compendium is an issue which we will be discussing and hopefully trying to address in a future software release.
HTML Interactive Maps Export
The interactive maps export is not ‘screenreadable’ at present. It is recommended that people wanting to use a screenreader with our HTML exports use the Oultine export instead.
HTML Outline Export
We have made many improvements to our outline export to make it more user friendly with a screenreader. Tables have been removed and duplicate links have been removed. Heading <Hx> tags have been employed to help indicated the indentation in the outline which denotes the level of node linking within a map. Alt text has been added to each icon in the outline export which holds the node type and label information for combined links, or the node type and image name for separate links.
The outline export is currenly the best way for people wishing to use screen readers to interact with Compendium.
Windows display settingsWindows display setting ‘High Contrast #1 large’ (black background, white and yellow text with large font) was used for testing.
There are currently the following issues with Compendium inheriting the Windows display settings:
We will be investigating these issue for a future release.