Ironically, I am a big advocate of accessible design. I was only pointing out that frames are not intrinsically inaccessible…albeit they are a bit of a vestigial organ of the internet.

I think we should definitely continue to push the LMS community (although that community is shrinking with the grab of WebCT by Blackboard as you mentioned) to create accessible standards-based learning systems…AND push the AT companies to catch up with technology.

A major issue regarding Blackboard and accessibilty is the availability of the latest screen reader applications. A lot of the older versions did not work with frames. Blackboard is saying that their applications are frame accessible if you have the latest screenreader software.

The Blackboard representative seemed to know absolutely nothing about the subject of website accessibility. It was both sad and frustrating .

“There’s a frameset that contains the nav frame and the course frame. The course frame contains a nested frameset that includes the header frame (which contains the “breadcrumbs”, or links inside the course environment) and a coursecontent frame. The coursecontent frame is the frameset that you will interact with most when in the course environment. It contains a table of contents frame, named “toc”, and a main frame. The toc frame contains a list of links to the different areas in the course, such as announcements, course documents, and communication.”

http://library.blackboard.com/docs/ScreenReaderTutorial.htm (Accessed 4/17/07)

Someone adept with JAWS would probably be able to navigate this stuff pretty easily, but I really can’t judge. It is a very powerful application.

Could it Bb be made easier? I don’t know. Should the person at the demo booth know what frames are? If it is important enough for the ScreenReader Tutorial address it, I would think that the demo person should have some notion of the issue.

-John N.

It looks like the latest versions of JAWS and Window Eyes support frames. However, these applications are incredibly expensive. They both retail for about $900.00. Older versions of these applications do not offer the same type of support for frames. Blackboard is essentially relying on third party applications to make their products accessible.

In my opinion, this means that Blackboards use of frames is inaccessible and that only the latest versions of assistive technology (AT) applications are making Blackboard accessible for users with visual impairments.

The big picture issue here is that almost all of the learning management systems (LMS) that currently exist have accessibility issues. The majority of application developers did not “grow up” with accessibility on their minds.

I respectfully disagree with you regarding the knowledge of the Blackboard booth representative. Blackboard was running a product demo and as such, should have had staff on hand who were informed of the major issues surrounding their products. Or are you saying that accessibility is not a big issue at Blackboard?

The link for accessibility information at Blackboard is presented in a small font on the Blackboard homepage at the very bottom of the page.

Furthermore, your email address might be from Yahoo but your IP address says a lot about your identity: wslynn4.webct.com. WebCT used to be one of the most inaccessible learning management systems on the planet. Blackboard and WebCT merged a few years ago so essentially you are officially affiliated with Blackboard which means that your comments might be misconstrued as being a little biased. I would appreciate a little transparency from those who are employed by the corporations that I blog about…

Cheers!

It is great that you challenged the Bb people concerning accessibility but it should be no surprise that the person giving the presentation is not the person building the product and as such probably has no idea what HTML is, nevermind frames.