Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

We've been making books and we would like to hear how accessible they are from your perspective, and what we can do differently to make them better.
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Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
jennlortie
»
Mon Mar 19, 2018 11:49 am
Please follow this link to access the wiki: https://wiki.libraries.coop/doku.php?id ... xt:start. This is the primary training tool for new production assistants. We would like to know more about the accessibility of the wiki.

Some questions to answer:

Is the wiki easy to navigate through? How can it be improved?
How easy is it to find the information you are looking for?
For example, imagine you need to find the “Terms of Use” documentation to copy and paste into your book, without having the link. Could you find this easily?
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
skyt
»
Mon Mar 19, 2018 3:33 pm
Hello. I have tested this wiki out using JAWS and NVDA and they both work and allow me to get through this wiki. It is easier to find a section to read by using my screen readers filnd dialog or using the arrow keys. Thanks, Sky.
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
rmarion
»
Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:45 pm
Hello. I have taken a look at the wiki. Generally I also found it easy to navigate. For the most part it is accessible and well laid out. There is quite a bit of information there so it makes it more difficult to look for specific information quickly, but the order of the information is logical for learning all the steps for producing books. One of the things I noticed was missing from the webpage were skip navigation links or skip to content links. There was the breadcrumb trail which also does help. As far as finding specific items to paste into documents, I used my screen reader’s command to creat a dialog box of links and then used the arrow keys to scan the list. For example, I was able to do this to find the About this Digital Talking Book and terms of use information I needed to insert into my book.
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
rmarion
»
Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:55 pm
I forgot to mention this in my previous note. I think there should be a skip to next topic or chapter link on the section of the wiki page that shows the detailed steps for a given task. Currently one as to just choose the next topic from the menu on the left of the screen, but this is more of a challenge for some people using screen readers to get back to where they were reading content.
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
leahbrochu
»
Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:45 am
Thanks so much for your assessments, Sky and Richard!

Just a funny thing to note - I just tried to do a search for the phrase "Skip navigation" + Dokuwiki (the document repository software that the NNELS wiki is created with), and I did not get back very many useful search results. I should have thought of it but I guess that Google must search the source code on web pages, so if it finds "Skip navigation" in the source code - ie, as a part of the webpage, it will return it in the search results. Since "Skip navigation" is such a common accessibility feature, i guess it is not a very helpful thing to search!

Our hands are somewhat tied by the software, but we will bring this up to people and see if we can get "skip" functions added to the wiki :)
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
rmarion
»
Wed Mar 21, 2018 12:48 pm
Not a big deal if it can't be done with the existing wiki software. However, I do think the more important skip functions that are necessary if any can be done, would be skip to next section, skip to previous section or even return to table of contents. Similar to what can be done with an eBook. I will use the other forum topics to comment on examples of screen shots that could use Alt Tags.
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
Daniella.LP
»
Mon Mar 26, 2018 4:51 am
I find it easy to navigate the wiki and search for specific information. I use the find function in JAWS quite a bit to look for links or text in web pages, and I was able to find what I needed even if I did not have the direct link. I also have done searches for specific terms in the wiki and found the information I was looking for.

As others have mentioned, a "Skip navigation" link would be helpful. Also, maybe adding tags or categories for the different topics, to find related information easily. Another option could be to show topics that are related to specific tasks in the production process together under a heading separating them from other topics. So for example all the steps to change the styles under a heading like "first steps, preparing the file"; all the topics relevant to the front matter under a "front matter" heading, etc.
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Re: Week 4: Accessibility of the wiki (General)

Post by
ka.li
»
Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:16 am
As others have said, adding tags and skip to links would help. I use the find command in both NVDA and JAWS a lot to find specific pieces of information. Generally, I have no issues as well with navigating the wiki. I noticed that there is a search landmark on the wiki pages. I think it makes sense if the software already utilizes landmarks, to add a main landmark at the beginning of the content on the pages.
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