[NABS-L] Question Regarding Accessibility With McGraw-Hill Connect

[Noah Carver]

Dear Jackson,

I hope this message finds you well.

I tried McGraw-Hill Connect for an Elementary German class that I will be
taking this semester. Here is part of the email I sent to the Office of
Disability Resources at my school describing the multiple
accessibility failures I discovered:

"I've given this a cursory look. Unfortunately, the online textbook has the
same problems as the Italian textbook, namely that English is labeled as
German and German is labeled as English. This is particularly apparent with
image descriptions and built-in page controls that are English but read as
German. This makes content tagged incorrectly unintelligible. In regards to
the workbook, I loaded the first activity, which has the following
instructions:

'Alles klar?

 A  One of the things you will learn to do in German is to give information
about yourself and other people in different situations and contexts. Look
at this young woman’s profile and find the following information about her.'

The image required to do this activity is not read at all by my screen
reader. I called AIRA to confirm there was an image there, and there was,
but there's absolutely nothing there according to JAWS. If this is the
state of accessibility for the first activity of Chapter 1, God knows what
else is in there, and I don't want to find out the hard way when
inaccessible homework needs doing."

To clarify, I have found language class accessibility to be particularly
abismal. I hope that administrators of your sociology course have taken
better care to make material accessible. With that being said, I wouldn't
rely on McGraw-Hill Connect to be fully accessible given my experience.  If
you have a chance, I would suggest requesting access to your course
materials early so that you can determine whether or not the course content
is indeed accessible. I would also suggest notifying
your Accessibility/Disability Office and/or your instructor now that the
McGraw-Hill Connect platform might not be accessible and that
accommodations may be needed.

I hope this helps. I also hope that someone with direct McGraw-Hill Connect
sociology course experience can chime in.

Sincerely,

Noah
--
Noah Carver
Candidate, B.M. '26
Applied Music (Performance) -- Voice
Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester
[image: JAWS Certified, 2023]
<https://www.freedomscientific.com/Training/Certification/>
+1 (207) 557-9143 <+12075579143>
noahcarver494 at gmail.com


On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 10:51 AM Jackson T. Schwoebel via NABS-L <
nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hello Students,
>
>
>
> I hope all of you are doing well. I am taking a Sociology course using a
> McGraw-Hill Connect platform this semester. Rather than having the quizzes
> and Examinations on Blackboard, the instructor has us take them through
> McGraw-Hill Connect. Has anyone used this platform successfully with JAWS?
> If so, how was your experience? Was the platform fully accessible with
> JAWS? Were there any hangups or anything that was not accessible with JAWS?
> Thanks, all feedback will be appreciated.
>
>
>
> Kind Regards,
>
>
>
> Jackson Schwoebel
>
>
>
>
>
> Jackson T. Schwoebel, A.A.
>
> He/Him/His
>
> Secretary | Ohio Association of Blind Students
>
> Phone: (706) 905–1963
>
> Business Email: jtschwoebel at yahoo.com
>
> NFB Email: jtschwoebel.nfb at gmail.com
>
>
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