[Trainer-Talk] Accessing sharepoint links with JAWS

[Deborah Armstrong]

                The recent newsletter sent out by Freedom Scientific indicated near the end of next month, they'd offer a webinar on Office 365, which I desperately need, as I do continue to struggle with it at work.

I see it's not in their listing of upcoming webinars yet, but that's probably because marketing got a little ahead of reality.

One problem most of my BVI students really struggle with is accessing the sharepoint links I send them. I produce alternate media for a community college. The sad thing here is that my LD students don't have any trouble with sharepoint links; it's the JAWS users who are really struggling. Even I an experienced blind user of several screen readers find the experience inconsistent.

For example this link:
                https://foothilldeanza-my.sharepoint.com/personal/10270840_fhda_edu/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?folderid=15189d7ac2cea4d0da2d7dc538175c828&authkey=ARxTCF4ObRJdv7qNGDkvX8Y

is a typical guest access link to a folder for a single student with all his textbooks. Some are in PDF, some in Word, some in Daisy, you get the idea; it's whatever I've been able to collect for him.

He needs to open the Daisy in FS reader, the PDF files in Adobe, and the Word docs in Wordpad or Word, whatever he has on his home, lab  or classroom PCs. He might be in Windows 7 8 or 10; he might be using FireFox, IE Chrome, or even heaven forbid, Edge!

Anyway, if you pull up this link  and try to navigate with JAWS it's fairly challenging. You are     sometimes in virtual cursor mode, sometimes in application mode. Normally you can right-click on a link to download a file, but that too, doesn't work everywhere here. Sometimes if you press Enter on a file it loads up in an inaccessible view in something called "Word Online" which apparently is different than Office 365. The terminology is confusing, SharePoint, One-Drive, Office 365, Office online; someone should do a whole webinar unraveling all of it!

The reason I don't use Google Drive, DropBox, SugarSync, or any of the other file sharing services is that our college has standardized on Sharepoint, and my LD students love it. Also at CSUN, Microsoft spent so much effort talking about how accessible Office now is, so I keep thinking I'm missing something.

The files are in a 7-column grid, but most of its columns are not relevant to someone simply trying to access those files. If you tab to the actions menyu you sometimes find it, sometimes tab right in to the tool bar or address bar. If you find the actions menu you get choices like "share" and "print" but not "download" which is the typical choice most students more frequently need to access their books. And if you tab to actions how can you be sure you've selected the right file to act on?

If you wanted to load one of the Daisy books in FS reader, that would add additional challenges. You also have to be sure those PDFS don't load up in the browser, so that's more configuration which may or may not have happened on a particular student's computer.

This whole cloud experience is both frustrating for me and my students and what I most need is a clear, unambiguous set of steps I can give them to access their files when I send them a sharepoint link like the one above.

I hope the upcoming FS webinar will cover this. I have written Dan Clark asking him to tackle this challenge. Comments from other trainers are welcome and have fun exploring this sharepoint link with your screen reader!

--Debee
(Deborah Armstrong, De Anza College Alternate Media.)

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