JAWS Results

Spring 2001

Few problems in any program were discovered while using JAWS. In fact, we had no problems at all navigating WebCT.

JAWS was able to interpret Blackboard 4 and Blackboard 5 correctly, with one exception. When images were turned off, as many JAWS users might do, the user cannot tab past the image map in the navigation frame. This image map is for the minor navigation features course map and search. Using the tab key while on the second button, course map, took the curser back to the first button, search. Using the tab on the first, took the user to the second. This endless loop made it difficult to go to other sections of the course. However, if images were turned on, tabbing worked properly on the image map.

There were some errors reading the Prometheus page with JAWS. The biggest problem was in tabbing to the submit button in the page creation dialogues. On most of these pages, the button was in a frame of its own that is not part of the tab order. The only way we found to get to the submit button was to mouse to it, not something many, if any, JAWS users would be able to do.

An additional error was missing alt text on linked images in the top frame; the browser read the URL of the linked images instead. These URLs were very lengthy.

JAWS was able to read between the frames without difficulty, starting with the Navigation frame on the left, then the main frame.

Fall 2001