Very frustrated with Trivantis and 508

[joejubee]

Just a quick note to Trivantis and anyone using Lectora who needs to produce Section 508-compliant eLearning.



It sure seems to me like Trivantis has forgotten about Section 508 again. Sure, years ago, they touted that Section 508 was a key feature and selling point for their software, and it was - they worked a ton with government agencies and software developers to make sure that everything that was published was as accessible as possible (as long as the person building it knew what needed to be done.)

So, then they release vX.5... and whoops! We forgot to QC the software update before we released it, so now none of the video players are Section 508 compliant. Our bad. But trust us, the vX.6 will solve that issue. So I install X.6... and guess what? It's still publishing non-compliant video players. Sure, they added the handy "Use Section 508 Options" in the publish menu, but even when that's selected, the video player's buttons are all read as "unlabeled button."

Nice.

I understand that as a company gets larger, they eventually abandon the business model that got them to where they were and selecting instead to cater to the masses. I understand the economics of it. It's just too bad that it appears that another company is spending more time developing animated avatars than making sure that they publish Section 508 compliant products.

Boo... We don't want neon-lighting in our cup holders, guys - we want a good product that functions well. Spend a little more time on the essentials, and a little less time on the fluff.



Joe

PS- I still really like Lectora.

[joejubee]

Ok, so I think I've located the issue. It appears that if you select one of the skins for the video player, they are not 508 compliant. That's understandable since they were all developed by 3rd party people, but the error on Trivantis' side is when you select the "Use Section 508 Options" checkbox, the program still publishes using a noncompliant player.

Booo.

In my opinion, this was just another thing that was overlooked when they released the last (what, 3???) versions of Lectora.

Please fix this, and pay closer attention to 508 Compliance. Personally, I don't care about skins and animated avatars (what is this, 2007?) I care about a published product that is Section 508 compliant.

Again, I still love Lectora. I'm just a bit disappointed in it.

[krixquet]

Is there a fix for this issue, a work-around, anything?

[joejubee]

The only work-around is to use the standard skin for the video/audio players and don't use any custom skins. This is a bummer because the standard skin has little buttons, and our users want larger, better defined buttons to press. Oh well. The other option is to just build your own buttons in lectora. (For example a play button that has the action of playing the video, a mute button, etc.)

(I actually might just do that in the future...)

Hope this helps.

Joe

[krixquet]

Does the video type have to be FLV or can it be MP4? Trying to avoid the two avenues, one for those requiring closed-captioning and those on an iPad.

[joejubee]

I think the new player supports mp4, but haven't tried to see if it switches from the flash-based player to an html one on idevices. Something in me guesses it won't, or if it does, the captions won't work since they are loaded through the FLV player.

[krixquet]

Wow, I am disappointed... of course, it depends on how a person establishes their settings, but out of the box, JAWS reads the HTML tag names produced by Lectora (such as ID, Class, Name, etc.) I was so confused listening.