[nfbcs] University of Minnesota Site Accessibility

Kevin Fjelsted kfjelsted at gmail.com
Tue May 19 11:59:07 UTC 2015


Recently the University of Minnesota upgraded there entire online registration system by purchasing an externally developed software package from PeopleSoft.
Before this upgrade I was able with 98% accessibility to search for classes perform online registration tasks, make online book  and fee payments, view my unofficial transcript, and a myriad of other tasks.
Since the system change I would estimate that the site is less than ten percent accessible.
I have a number of options for browsers and screen readers including JAWS with IE, JAWS with Firefox, Safari with Voiceover both on the Mac and IOS devices, Google Chrome with the Chromevox screenreader extension, NVDA with firefox.
Some of the tasks require a log on, however some do not.
I would be interested in getting some other feedback and opinions on the site. Is there anyone that can try the "class Search" function?
This function should permit one to see the classes offered in a particular term by a particular department.
To do this, go to 
http://onestop.umn.edu <http://onestop.umn.edu/>
 
Under the "tools" section there is a link called "Class Search".

This link does not require a log on.
Once one has clicked on  this option one must select  the institution.
I attempted to choose Twin Cities/Rochester in the combo box. Windows crashed miserably especially with IE. OSX Safari/VO worked the best. Chrome/Chromevox went into repeated loops of talking and froze the browser.
I then chose "summer 2015" for the term in the next combo box with similar results.
I then went to the subject field and typed in "CSCI" for computer science. There seems to be some sort of selector hear from which one is actually supposed to pick a subject, however this access appears to be nonexistent.

I then went to the "Show Open Classes Only" field and unchecked this box.
On IE the entire system crashes as soon as I uncheck the box. Safari was fine. Chrome froze the speech engine.
I Then chose Minneapolis for the campus.
The rest of the fields I left as default and clicked on search.
Once the search screen came up (which I could only achieve on Safari), I found that the table structure for viewing the data was very difficult to navigate.
If anyone can get to this screen on another platform I would appreciate feedback on how easy the class information is to view. For instance, can one see the instructor field for a given class?

It appears that the class list is broken up into separate tables for each class which means that one cannot continually navigate down a list of classes with navigation controls. How does this work on other platforms?
Thanks.
-Kevin
  


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