Accessibility updates 

As part of large an ongoing efforts to ensure the accessibility of our assessment products we have had to make some changes that may impact the following:

Sortlist question type

In this question type we have migrated the structure of the HTML for the source and target containers from <table> to <div>.

Previously the children of the <div class "lrn_sortlist_column lrn_sortlist_dropzone_column"> were contained within <table> elements, now all children of this class are contained in <div> elements.

If any page integrating this question type contains custom CSS targeting these containers this CSS will need to be updated and tested.

Assigning regions to the Assess player

We made a change to some accessibility labels in Assess. Previously we had screen reader only headings for many of the Assess regions. Following is a list of the heading label bundles and associated labels:

    // REGION HEADER LABELS
    regionHeaderTopLeft: 'Assessment title',
    regionHeaderTopRight: 'Assessment timer and count',
    regionHeaderRight: 'Assessment menu bar',
    regionHeaderBottomRight: 'Assessment navigation',
    regionHeaderBottomLeft: '',
    regionHeaderBottom: 'Assessment navigation',
    regionHeaderItems: 'Assessment items',
    regionHeaderMenu: 'Assessment menu',
    regionHeaderTools: 'Assessment tools',
    regionHeaderToc: 'Assessment table of contents',

On advice from our accessibility auditors we changed these from using invisible Headings to using Landmarks which show up in the screen reader landmark list and allow the screen reader user to navigate to various parts of the Assess player.

Additionally, with the introduction of region overrides some of the original heading labels have become redundant as the references to the content in the regions may not be correct if the region content is configured differently to our defaults (main, horizontal etc). For example:

regionHeaderBottomRight: 'Assessment navigation'

The bottom right region may not contain the 'navigation' (next/previous buttons) if the region overrides have been used. So this is misleading for the user.

What does this mean if you pass a customised label bundle for the original headings?

We have mapped some of the existing labels in the label bundle to the new region 'landmarks' and the rest are no longer used. That said, if a label bundle exists for the ones unused this will not cause issues and they will not be populated anywhere. Following is what is mapped from the original list.

regionHeaderItems - the label from this now populates to an ARIA label associated with role="region" on the Items container, default value displayed in landmarks is Assessment items.

regionHeaderTools - the label from this now populates to an ARIA label associated with role="navigation" on the tool menu container, default value displayed in landmarks is Assessment tools. 

regionHeaderToc - the label from this now populates to an ARIA label associated with role="navigation" on the table of contents container, default value displayed in landmarks is Assessment table of contents.

We have also added a new label for the timer assessmentTime, however this was not explicitly mapped from the original regionHeaderTopRight label. 

Lastly, we have skipped mapping the Navigation heading labels as we have implemented a skip-to-navigation link for keyboard and Screen reader users. It appears at the first tab stop after the item and takes the user directly to the Next button no matter where it is configured in regions.

Icon balance and refresh

As a part of an ongoing effort to streamline the user interface we have updated the following icons that are present across the following APIs:

• Items API (via lower level Assess and Questions API)
• Annotations API

Icon name	Previous	Updated
Accessibility
Calculator
Carat left
Carat right
Clock
Exclamation circle
Exclamation triangle
Flag
Fullscreen
Image
Info circle
Line reader
Notepad
Pause
Pencil
Protractor
Resource
review-screen
Rotate arrow
Ruler
Save
Sticky note add
Sticky note show hide

Our icons have been re-designed using a grid, to make sure icons are visually balanced. Customers who have customized on top of our icons should check if any modifications to the visual alignment of icons across the APIs are needed.