accessibility for AtoM

[kjam...@ualberta.ca]

Hello,

I am looking into accessibility accommodations in AtoM and was wondering what accessibility features AtoM works with? I saw that the 2.3 release had improved keyboard navigation and screen reader support, are there any other features? Or further information about screen readers? How does this impact access to digital objects?

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Krista,

So far, that work is all we have been able to do to better support accessibility in AtoM. Essentially, we added basic aria tags (for screen readers) throughout the public interface and made sure that alt-text was available wherever possible, as well as adding the keyboard navigation fixes for the search box and browse menus. The sponsoring client for this work had hired an independent accessibility advisor who was testing with a screenreader throughout, but there are definitely places where this could be improved. Thus far, no work has been done to add this kind of accessibility to the internal site - e.g. the edit templates etc when you are logged in. We would love to do more of this kind of work!

I'm not sure how this would impact access to digital objects - there is not currently a manual field in the user interface where users could add alt-text for images or video, for example. When a PDF has a text layer it is added to the index, so a screenreader should probably also be able to interpret it, but of course it depends on the quality of the text layer (some OCR on older documents can be terrible).

I wish I could tell you more, but I was only peripherally involved in this development project. As far as I know, the inclusion of aria tags did not extend to, for example, gracefully degrading user interface elements depending on accessibility and browser support, etc. so there is surely more work that could be done. As we learned from this project, accessibility is something that should ideally be built in from the ground up in a web application - it can be much more difficult to add it later. This is a lesson I am strongly advocating that we carry forward into AtoM's next generation, when the time comes.

Regards,

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 3:08 PM, <kjam...@ualberta.ca> wrote:

Hello,

I am looking into accessibility accommodations in AtoM and was wondering what accessibility features AtoM works with? I saw that the 2.3 release had improved keyboard navigation and screen reader support, are there any other features? Or further information about screen readers? How does this impact access to digital objects?

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[kjam...@ualberta.ca]

Thanks for the info!

On Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 1:32:43 PM UTC-6, Dan Gillean wrote:

Hi Krista,

So far, that work is all we have been able to do to better support accessibility in AtoM. Essentially, we added basic aria tags (for screen readers) throughout the public interface and made sure that alt-text was available wherever possible, as well as adding the keyboard navigation fixes for the search box and browse menus. The sponsoring client for this work had hired an independent accessibility advisor who was testing with a screenreader throughout, but there are definitely places where this could be improved. Thus far, no work has been done to add this kind of accessibility to the internal site - e.g. the edit templates etc when you are logged in. We would love to do more of this kind of work!

I'm not sure how this would impact access to digital objects - there is not currently a manual field in the user interface where users could add alt-text for images or video, for example. When a PDF has a text layer it is added to the index, so a screenreader should probably also be able to interpret it, but of course it depends on the quality of the text layer (some OCR on older documents can be terrible).

I wish I could tell you more, but I was only peripherally involved in this development project. As far as I know, the inclusion of aria tags did not extend to, for example, gracefully degrading user interface elements depending on accessibility and browser support, etc. so there is surely more work that could be done. As we learned from this project, accessibility is something that should ideally be built in from the ground up in a web application - it can be much more difficult to add it later. This is a lesson I am strongly advocating that we carry forward into AtoM's next generation, when the time comes.

Regards,

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 3:08 PM, <kjam...@ualberta.ca> wrote:

Hello,

I am looking into accessibility accommodations in AtoM and was wondering what accessibility features AtoM works with? I saw that the 2.3 release had improved keyboard navigation and screen reader support, are there any other features? Or further information about screen readers? How does this impact access to digital objects?

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[L Snider]

Hi Dan,

I was very glad to read about your continuing commitment to making AtoM more accessible. One thing I wanted to point out, as this is my field of specialty, is that users can use screen readers, but they will also be using magnifiers (up to 400%), text to speech software and many people are now using products like Dragon Naturally Speaking, that can be both text to speech and speech to text. As well, there are users who won't be using a mouse to navigate the site, and/or using other apps, software and hardware to use the site and view the digital objects.

I would encourage Artefactual to increase its focus on accessibility for all viewers, since Ontario has the AODA, Manitoba now has the AMA, Nova Scotia will have its law very soon and all (will or currently do) cover the accessibility of websites (WCAG 2.0 AA compliance). That list is only Canada based, and there are many other laws in the US, UK, Australia and Europe (as well, most of the other Canadian provinces are expected to have Acts in the next 5 years and the Federal Act expected next year may cover websites or not).

Since I am getting more and more interest in this (wearing my other hats), if anyone has funding and is interested in pursuing this further, please contact me off list. As well, I am currently seeking grant funding opportunities, so contact me off list if you are interested in looking at that option.

Cheers

Lisa

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[Dan Gillean]

Great points, Lisa - thanks for sharing, and for proactively seeking out collaborators to help make this happen!

Krista, Lisa was actually the client contact on the previous accessibility work that was done in AtoM, so it is possible she can elaborate better than I on the work that was done and what it does / doesn't address.

Regards,

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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[kjam...@ualberta.ca]

Hi Lisa,

As Dan suggested, if you could provide any details on what work has already been done so there is more information about what is there, that would be great. If it isn't too much to ask as well, any information on what you, as an expert in accessibility, would recommend for future work that would improve accessibility would be VERY helpful!

Thanks!

Best,

Krista

[L Snider]

Hi Krista,

This project was a couple of years ago, so I may not remember all the details (I was part of a big team). We could only focus on certain things, due to a number of factors. I haven't worked for that institution for over a year now, as I am now a consultant. So this is just my personal view of what we worked with at that time.

Basically AtoM was inaccessible to screen reader users, or keyboard only users. One could not get past the top search bar, so the pages were completely inaccessible to those users. The very small project we did, at least made the pages more accessible if you use a screen reader or keyboard only. However, from memory, testing was not done by my work place with any other tech, so that didn't include text to speech, magnifiers, etc.

Not everything in AtoM is problematic. From memory, the headings seemed to be good and there was some ARIA code in there (sign posts for people who read the site with a screen reader), although I would need to go back and audit those again to make sure.

I can tell you that AtoM is still problematic for many users. I did a quick audit of it a while back (it wasn't with 2.3 and it wasn't a full audit). For example, there is no way to add alternative text for images and this is a major issue. As well, there are no keyboard focus links or skip links, the navigation system may still be problematic, the colour contrast in many areas is not good, zooming may be problematic, form elements need labels, etc. Many of the changes are fairly easy to do, but others are much more complex due to the way AtoM works with the hierarchy.

There is no way the default AtoM installation would pass WCAG 2.0 A, let alone 2.0 AA. This is problematic, as all legislation now uses WCAG 2.0 AA. While WCAG 2.0 is just a set of guidelines and even if the site passed all of those, it wouldn't necessarily be truly accessible. However, it is a good start.

As well, many library, archives and museum software vendors, particularly in the Europe and the US provide a VPAT for that software that list what they have done in terms of accessibility. In my experience, librarians use these the most, and while the ones I have seen are almost all problematic for different reasons (they say one thing but the reality is different), they at least give one a starting point. The VPAT usually works off of WCAG 2.0 (or the old Section 508 that is now using WCAG 2.0 and isn't a different set of guidelines anymore).

A full audit would need to be done to a new version of AtoM to note all the issues. This is where I would start, and then that audit would list the most crucial things that are needed, and list things down from there. The audit is crucial, because one would need to test every single aspect of the site. Plus, I use human testers with different, and multiple, disabilities who use different technologies, and different versions of those technologies, so I get a true picture of what is going on.

This is where I am thinking about applying for funding, because of the time needed to do a proper job of the audit, get a list of crucial to low level importance fixes and doing some of the easier fixes, etc. I wouldn't need a huge amount of funding to get the work done, and the work itself could be done fairly quickly. If I could clone myself it would be awesome, but paying clients have to come first!

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Lisa

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[kjam...@ualberta.ca]

That is really great (and very useful) information Lisa! Much appreciated! My unit is starting to talk about accessibility in our systems so I wanted to get a feel for how things were with AtoM, which I think I have now. Hopefully we will have the resources to contribute to the AtoM project on this front. Fingers crossed!

[Matt Pearson]

I realize that this is an older thread - is there any recent information on AtoM's levels of accessibility. Are there VPATs for AtoM and Archivematica?

I need to document where AtoM (and our other applications) are compliant, partially compliant (and how) and where the 508 standard criteria doesn't apply.

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Matt, 

Unfortunately, very little has changed since this thread was originally posted. In 2.5, there will now be a user-editable field in the Digital object metadata area to add alt-text for digital object uploads, but that's the only thing I can think of that has changed since the public interface accessibility enhancements added in 2.3. 

Until recently, we have had very few U.S. users so we don't have any VPATs prepared. One of the great challenges of our current maintenance model for AtoM (and Archivematica) - discussed more on our wiki here - is that we depend on community support for major development work. Full accessibility compliance was not something that was considered and built into AtoM from the ground up during its original development, and adding it now - and doing it properly - requires consultation with accessibility experts who can help with testing and implementation details, along with a lot of refactoring. It's possible, but it's not trivial. While we at Artefactual believe these are important goals for the project, these are beyond what we can add ourselves without community support. 

If your institution is interested in sponsoring and evaluation of AtoM's current accessibility, and an analysis of where and how it should be further improved - or better yet, that plus development work to implement the recommendations, please feel free to contact me off-list. If your institution goes ahead and brings in its own accessibility consultant to evaluate AtoM, we would love it if the results were shared with the community. 

Regards, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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[Matt Pearson]

Dan, all,

Thank you for the update and feedback! This will help as we continue our work in implementing across our agency.

We will likely have to perform a documented assessment at some point or switch to a platform that has that documentation available. I'm confident that we are not the only ones in the US or elsewhere who'll potentially be performing this. As you mention, the undertaking is not trivial. Would it make sense to attempt a coordinated effort - crowd-source the review and documentation? I think that it would provide opportunities:

* for multiple institutions to participate;

* to report this (and the contribution to the community) up to management in order to encourage more interest;

* to accomplish the documentation piece efficiently; and

* to accomplish it more quickly.

I also understand that accessibility compliance goals vary from one institution to another. The need for assessment and documentation is something that we probably do share, though. Just some thoughts.

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Phone: 617-271-4440 • Fax: 617-718-9855
www.matpearson.com

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Matt, 

I would absolutely love to see a coordinated community effort to help document AtoM's accessibility against known national, state/provincial, and international accessibility guidelines, standards, and best practices. 

I think for that to be effective, it would still require the assistance of experts with the proper knowledge of the relevant standards, as well as familiarity with and access to assistive technology tools. Some elements - such as color schemes, font sizes, etc. - wouldn't necessarily require this, but checking a line of code to see if there is an aria tag is *very* different than seeing how accessible a page is when trying to navigate with a keyboard and a screenreader. 

I think that we'd also need an institution or individual to take a leadership role in helping to coordinate efforts. This would be needed to help divide up the work based on knowledge of the relevant standards, access to assistive technologies and the know-how to test with them, available time, etc. That alone requires a certain familiarity with the work that we at Artefactual don't currently have without outside expertise, though we would certainly be interested in participating in such an effort if our community coordinates it, or wants to sponsor some/all of the work involved. 

If your institution is interested in taking on this leadership role in coordinating such efforts, let us know how we can help! 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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