Our A-Prompt evaluation highlighted errors that were difficult to determine in the other parts of the review. It also confirmed some errors that we had already found.
It was difficult to evaluate a set of pages that were the same across all programs;
instead, we reviewed a sample content page from each program. Content pages
are the most important aspect of LMS packages, as these are most likely to contain
vital course information.
A-Prompt revealed a number of similarities across the products. The same seven
errors occurred in each course package. A-Prompt reported missing DOCTYPEs,
fixed font sizes, missing descriptive text for images, link text that is not
meaningful, missing captions, and missing summaries for tables.
A-Prompt found unique errors in the products as well. Two products, Blackboard
5 and Prometheus, do not identify the language of the page. All products save
Blackboard 4 had JavaScript problems. These products provided no alternative
to JavaScript-based functions, such as login and chat forums. This issue is
reflected in the reader tests we did with these products. A-Prompt found suspicious
alt tags and input label problems in WebCT, and auto-refresh errors in Blackboard
5.
Content authored by AnnMarie Johnson
and Sean Ruppert. ©2001
last updated
November 19, 2001
by AnnMarie Johnson.