Authoring for Accessibility

When authoring Questions and activities, it’s important to focus on the following areas of accessibility:

The sections below outline official standards and guidelines relevant to each area, along with the practical measures we take to meet these needs.

Standards and guidelines

Learnosity's approach

We reference WCAG AA standard contrast ratios and test to make sure our products are usable in grayscale. For features that rely on varied colors (e.g., histogram settings in chart Questions), we also test against specific color-blindness variants.

Any use of color to convey information is paired with iconography, text, style enhancements, or other accessible alternatives.

Our assessment tools provide alternate color palettes for users to select from - helpful for students who prefer higher or lower contrast.

Contrast, color, and legibility also improve everyday usability for sighted users, including:

  • People in dim or very bright environments.
  • People using dim or low-contrast displays and projectors.
  • People reviewing printed materials in hard copy.

Our approach to accessibility includes the following:

  • Authors can select the drawing colors that are appropriate for background images in the highlight and drawing Question types.
  • Authors can set the state fill, stroke, and focus color for hotspot areas to ensure they are clearly distinguishable from background images. These settings can be applied globally or configured individually for each hotspot.

Tips for content authors

Content authors should pay particular attention to contrast and color when creating:

  • Images in Question stimuli.
  • Image-based Question types including hotspot, image highlight, image upload, and image cloze Questions.
  • Image highlight and Drawing Questions: check that the highlight color is distinguishable from the image.
  • Hotspot Questions: check that the selected and focus colors for each hotspot are distinguishable from the image.
  • Video content.
  • Questions that allow the author to choose UI colors, such as hotspot.

The W3C provides a list of tools for testing and improving color accessibility; we recommend the aXe and Color Contrast Analyzer extensions for Chrome.

Standards and guidelines

Learnosity's approach

Our approach to accessibility includes the following:

  • Ensuring all features are usable with a combination of Tab, Space, Escape, and Enter. Where appropriate, we also support arrow keys. This benefits users with motor impairments or injuries, as well as any user who prefers efficient keyboard navigation.
  • Providing important information in hover states and tooltips through keyboard, touch, and screen reader–friendly elements, so it remains accessible to users without a mouse.
  • Designing intuitive keyboard navigation and focus behavior, including how modal and modeless dialog windows open, close, and can be navigated via keyboard input.
  • Offering keyboard interaction instructions wherever non-standard keyboard controls are implemented.
  • Incorporating keyboard usability early in development, since it directly influences the design and implementation of our user interface.

Tips for content authors

  • Consider the different kinds of input devices your users might have. Review your Questions and assessment content for instructions such as “Click” or “Use your mouse to…,” and rephrase them to ensure they are inclusive of touch and keyboard users as well.
  • Test content using only your keyboard’s Tab, Space, Enter, and arrow keys to understand how keyboard users experience your Questions.
  • Test content on a variety of touch devices to understand how touchscreen users experience your Questions.

Standards and guidelines

Many WCAG guidelines improve screen reader accessibility, including all keyboard-related requirements. Additional relevant guidance includes:

Learnosity's approach

Learnosity supports the leading screen readers on each major platform. Because different screen readers are optimized for specific browsers, we tailor our support as follows (with tutorials for reference):

Our implementation practices include:

  • Using semantic, hierarchical HTML, making tools more accessible to assistive technologies, including screen readers.
  • Applying ARIA attributes to improve support for assistive technologies including screen readers and navigation tools.
  • Bundling all hardcoded ARIA content as labels, allowing them to be customized.
  • Allowing authors to override labels on cloze and image-based Question types to ensure accurate screen reader descriptions.
  • Providing authoring tools that allow textual descriptions of visual content, including:
    • Transcripts for videos.
    • ALT text for all images.
    • ARIA labels for math and chemistry formulas.
  • Leveraging SpokenMath, which automatically generates textual descriptions of mathematical formulas for screen readers. These descriptions can also be manually edited or overridden.
  • Implementing UI enhancements for screen reader users. For example, a sighted user might see a button labeled “Next Month”, but a screen reader user would instead hear “Go to August” - providing clear meaning without relying on visual context.

Tips for content authors:

When authoring accessible content, consider the following best practices:

  • Use accessibility features in Learnosity Question types. For example, apply screen reader labels for images and math content.
  • Provide meaningful ALT text for images in assessments. The text should convey equivalent information to what sighted users see. WebAIM provides a useful guide to ALT text.
  • Include transcripts for videos to describe the relevant visual information.
  • Revise Questions where necessary. Some Question types cannot include meaningful ALT text or transcripts without revealing the answer. In these cases, consider redesigning the Question to provide equivalent challenge and learning outcomes for blind and sighted students alike.
  • Compare ALT text and visual content to ensure both provide the most helpful information for students.
  • Be mindful of limitations. Some Question types cannot be completed by students with particular disabilities - for example, image highlight Questions are not accessible to blind students. Consider alternatives, such as drawing Question types, that meet the same learning goals.

Standards and guidelines

Learnosity's approach

  • All Learnosity audio features allow the authors to provide transcripts.
  • Authors can add closed captions to video within the Learnosity video player.
  • Because Learnosity uses third-party video hosting services such as YouTube, Brightcove (v2023.3.LTS and prior), and Vimeo, authors can take advantage of the captioning features built into those platforms.
  • Authors can also choose to add sign language videos in the stimulus of any Question.
  • Transcripts and captions benefit a wide range of users beyond those with hearing or vision impairments, including:
    • People with language, reading, or cognitive difficulties.
    • People in noisy environments, quiet zones, or communal areas, as well as those without audio hardware.
    • Users with poor or intermittent internet connections or limited bandwidth.
  • The Space key will always pause any autoplay audio or video, even when the playback controls are hidden.

Tips for content authors

  • Ensure that any video containing important information includes a transcript that covers both the visual and audio details, supporting users with hearing, vision, and/or cognitive impairments.
  • Avoid setting video or audio content to autoplay. If autoplay is required, the content must provide controls that allow users to pause, mute, or stop playback.
  • Enhance video content with closed captions wherever possible.
  • Consider adding a sign language video or embedding sign language into the original video, as many deaf users prefer this to plain text captions.

Standards and guidelines

Learnosity's approach

  • Our responsive layouts support changing fonts and font sizes.
  • Assessment tools include options for students to adjust font size directly, which can often provide a better page layout than using a browser’s zoom feature.
  • Authors can specify font sizes within specific Questions and content sections.
  • Icons implemented with fonts are preserved even when the content font is changed.

Tips for content authors

  • Plan for font changes: Users may change fonts or font sizes. Test your content with various configurations using browser/system settings, and try tools like the OpenDyslexic extension for Chrome, which overrides default fonts.
  • Avoid embedding text into images or videos: Embedded text cannot be resized by the user. If text must appear in an image, provide it in another format (e.g., captions or ALT text).
  • Avoid flickering or flashing animations, in line with WCAG 2.3.1 and WCAG 2.3.2, to reduce the risk of seizures and visual discomfort.
  • Avoid justify-aligned text, as it can create difficulties for dyslexic readers.
  • Auto-save and timeout features help protect student work in cases of poor connectivity or interrupted assessments.
  • Flexible time limits: Proctors can extend time limits for individual students either by accessing the student’s computer (with a password) or remotely through the Events API, tailoring the assessment experience to student needs. This allows the proctors to tailor the time limit to match each student's abilities and challenges.
  • Undo/redo functionality in authoring and assessment tools helps users recover easily from mistakes.
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