We use Bloom to create an online version of our accessible book library. Our members include children with a range of print disabilities. As we prepare to share our resources, we wonder
a. if there is a way the page turn can be linked to the arrow keys ? Many of our members have motor impairment or low vision.
Many of the users will have to navigate with the equivalent of the left click of a mouse. Others find the small arrow for “turn page” hard to locate and press.
b. We audio describe the images where relevant to users with visual impairment. However, this is hard for children who have attention deficit, and certain visual processing disorders where they are unable to attend to visual and auditory features at the same time.
Is there a way they can choose to turn on/ off the function?
With regard to using the arrow keys, there is, apparently, a bug preventing this from happening when the book is first loaded. But after the user clicks the red circle to go to the second page, the arrow keys start working.
I’ve created a card in our bug tracker to fix it for the first load.
I have checked and yes, the page turning using arrow keys does work now! Thank you!
When viewed on the website, I find the audio readout doesn’t start automatically and it requires us to click a play/pause button - was that intentional?
I have checked and yes, the page turning using arrow keys does work now! Thank you!
Great!
When viewed on the website, I find the audio readout doesn’t start automatically and it requires us to click a play/pause button - was that intentional?
Unfortunately, as part of their security, browsers will not allow media to play without something they interpret as interaction from the user. So even though we try to start the audio right away, sometimes it doesn’t work. We are aware of the issue and are looking into anything we can do to improve it (https://issues.bloomlibrary.org/youtrack/issue/BL-8864).
In case this is helpful, it doesn’t seem to show up as a first option on a screen reader, so our users with vision impairment seem to miss it on opening a book.
Users who access the book using adaptive device such as a single click mouse and activating a “scan mode” on screen, will benefit from having clear buttons available for “Read aloud” and “Open book” at start (with ALT labels for vi users) and once the book is open, then buttons for “Next” and “Back” (with ALT labels for vi users)
Namita thank you for helping us get the accessibility of Bloom Player right. I’ve created this google doc for you to give feedback on the steps we will take.
Very glad to help. Please know I am no expert, but can certainly give feedback and also access my experiential experts who are my old students and now volunteers who usually test anything I create, to give us guidance.
John, this is fantastic. Sorry to be silent so long but when I tested the feature on our book Mr caterpillar, I found to my horror that our pic description audio was missing. I uploaded it again but now am going back to recheck all our stories.
Thank you for doing this…it’s a really useful feature.
