How does NoRedInk ensure that students with low to no vision can perceive important page changes?
NoRedInk engages students in part through highly interactive exercises. As a result of this interactivity, elements on the page may appear, move, and change as students work. To ensure that students are able to learn from NoRedInk's resources, we are committed to ensuring that all students can perceive page changes, including students who cannot rely on perfect vision or who may have difficult-to-see screens.
There are two main kinds of page changes: those which occur when students interact with standard web elements, and those which are related to our non-standard, custom interactions. Learn more about how we support each kind of change below, and note that NoRedInk includes a special "Announcement history" feature to ensure students and educators are well supported as students learn!
Changes to standard page elements
NoRedInk strives to design and code content properly so that assistive technology (including, but not limited to, screen readers and refreshable Braille displays) automatically announces changes to standard web elements to students. For instance, if a student clicks a checkbox on a page, their assistive technology will automatically announce something like "checkbox, checked" to the student, because we follow web accessibility standards and best practices.
Changes to non-standard page elements
Because NoRedInk often supports students through the use of non-standard elements that are far more interactive and fun than checkboxes, we also ensure that our unique interactions are announced to students' assistive technology. Additionally, we provide an announcement history feature so that students can review missed announcements or more complex announcements.
Technical note: These custom announcements are provided via aria-live live regions.
For example, consider our Guided Draft assignments, which provide students with guidance tailored to the type of paragraph they are currently writing. Students who can see the entire page visually will see the guidance on the page change as they navigate between paragraph types. Students who can't see the entire page visually will be alerted through our custom announcements that new help is available to them as they navigate between paragraph types.
For instance, in the screenshot below, a student moves into the first body paragraph of their essay and hears from their screen reader our custom announcement "Body paragraph help loaded to sidebar." Students can then navigate to the sidebar region of the page to review the new guidance if desired.
How can students review announcements with our announcement history feature?
Due to the nature and limitations of assistive technology, students typically only hear announcements a single time and usually don't have a way to re-play the last announcement or to read it more closely to inspect things like spelling, punctation, and capitalization.
To alleviate these problems, NoRedInk's accessibility team has provided an "Announcement history" section on every NoRedInk page! This section of the page lists the previous 10 custom announcements sent from NoRedInk to assistive technology, with the most recent announcement on top. This means that students and educators who need to review announcements for any reason can easily do so. To limit distractions, the announcement history section of the page is not visible by sight and is consistently docked at the very bottom of each page so that it does not interfere with other content and can be ignored if desired.
To review announcements, students can use their assistive technology keyboard shortcuts or menus to navigate to the section of the page with the heading "Announcement history" to quickly find the most recent announcements and get the most out of NoRedInk!
The following image shows a mock-up of the structure and content of the announcement history feature, though please keep in mind that this is not actually visible on the page. Note also that non-specific language shown visually on the page (such as "here") is changed to be clear and specific ("between the words 'genie' and 'cheese' ") for users who cannot see where the arrow is pointing:
Video demonstration
In the following video, a student is learning how to use our drag-and-drop interfaces with their screen reader. As the page changes to show the student new instructions, announcements are sent to the student's screen reader. The student only hears each announcement a single time.
In the latter half of this video, the student uses their screen reader's Headings menu to navigate quickly to the "Announcement history" section of the page. The student reviews the announcement history list to verify the previous announcements they heard. In this particular case, the student has their screen reader configured to read all punctuation, which is why you can hear punctuation being read when the student reviews the announcements.