In a recent accessibility audit, a few screen reader issues were flagged with the sidebars (specifically Progress, Course Navigation, and Search sidebars). Here is what the auditors said:
“When the Course navigation and progress sidebars launch, focus stays on the triggering element. Provision has been made for keyboard users to access the sidebar items in the correct tab order when they hit the tab key, but because the sidebars are not located directly below the triggering elements in the code, screen reader users using reading commands will not hear the sidebar options when they try to listen to the sidebars using reading commands.”
“When users interact with the navigation, search and progress sidebars, keyboard focus is trapped within the sidebars once they are launched, and the content behind the sidebars is visually dimmed. However, screen reader users are able to hear content which is outside of the sidebars if they use reading commands to explore the sidebar content. This may confuse screen reader users.”
Is it possible to send focus to the first item in the sidebars when they launch? And is it possible to somehow hide the outside/dimmed content from SRs?
Hi @Melissa , all 3 of those extensions were in a course audited by Online ADA and certified as WCAG 2.1 compliant late last year, and they didn’t find those problems that were mentioned. Particularly with the screen reader still reading collapsed items, that’s something we fixed quite a long time ago. Would a course republish resolve that one?
With the first issue, focus does stay on the button initially, but it lets the user knows that item is now expanded - I guess an argument could be made that focus should go to the first item immediately, but I would not class this as an accessibility ‘fail’. . I just retested with VoiceOver and I can access the list of items for each drawer in reading mode with no issues (I also tested with JAWS and NVDA prior to this course being audited).
From my experience, every time an accessibility audit is carried out, slightly different results emerge. With a fair chunk of accessibility issues, there’s room for interpretation as to the best way to set things up. We have tried to make the experience the best it can be, whilst also being audited by a company Intellum have worked with for years. When we had the results of the audit last year, some issues were straightforward fixes, but on some issues we did argue our case as to why things are set up in a certain way andOnline ADA agreed with our arguments. I just wanted to give you some more context on how we approach accessibility at Intellum. I hope this helps - Sam
Hi @Sam_Cook_Evolve_LQA , thanks for your response. That’s useful to understand how Intellum approaches accessibility, and to know what Online ADA thinks. We’ve undergone quite a thorough audit and are just trying to prioritise our fixes and figure out a way forward, so all this info is useful!
Some courses were published in March 2025, but others were republished in May 2024, which may be before certain issues were fixed. Matt mentioned on another thread that some accessibility fixes were launched in Nov 2024. I’m not sure about the collapsed items you mentioned - do you mean the “dim” section once a sidebar is opened? As I believe this is what point 2 is referring to.
I appreciate that accessibility audits can yield different results, and also appreciate that each Screen Reader is different, so it’s very hard to accommodate every possible scenario! Thank you for the insight - it is very helpful as we make certain decisions going forward.
The short answer is that if you are testing a course published prior to the last accessibility review you should absolutely expect that course to have accessibility issues. I would recommend that, when having a course accessibility-audited, you send the auditors a version of the course that has been published as recently as possible.
