[nfbcs] Anyone had success with SimNet based courses

[Tracy Carcione]

I had no success at all trying to use an online system to learn Excel,
because, as Doug says, it displayed the screen people would see, but Jaws
didn't see anything there.  I then was supposed to answer questions about
the screen I couldn't see.  I gave up at that point, and found a tutorial
written for blind people on using Excel.

I have not had any good experiences with online training, though
admittedly I haven't done it much.  There always seem to be critical
elements that don't work with speech, like the Excel screens that are just
images, or flash movies with inaccessible controls.  I wish there was
something we could do about this.  I've been trying to get online mandated
training at my workplace to be made accessible for at least 3 years, and
nothing has changed.  HR usually just sends a reader over, eventually.
They can make it sing and dance and talk Spanish, but they can't
 make it accessible?
Tracy

> I would be extremely surprised if this works right with any screen
> reader.  Screen readers tend to rely on MSAA, object models, and
> off-screen models, all of which are different or entirely missing in a
> simulated environment, because the simulations tend to focus on
> simulating the visual elements of a program, not the entire underlying
> structure of it.  So you might see a web page that visually looks like
> an Excel spreadsheet, but underneath, it's still a web page, and JAWS
> and other screen readers will be following the underlying structure
> and will present you with a view very different than what the actual
> program would present.
>
> All that said, if your goal is just to keep up with the class, not to
> learn how to use the application with JAWS, you may be able to do
> that.  The interaction will be different, but the results should be
> the same, assuming the environment itself is accessible.
>
> On Tue, Sep 01, 2009 at 04:27:30PM -0500, Robert Jaquiss wrote:
> Hello:
>
>      As part of my studies, I am supposed to take a self-paced class in
> Excel. The class uses something called SimNet by McGraw Hill. The
> student buys this "card" and can then log onto a site where various
> Microsoft products are simulated. Anyone had luck using JAWS with
> this? Thank you.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert
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> Doug Lee                 dgl at dlee.org                http://www.dlee.org
> SSB BART Group           doug.lee at ssbbartgroup.com
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