Adding pages for popup

kpeverill3403

Hi folks,

Newbie question here

So I've got a pile of information that I'm displaying in pop-up windows.  Couple of questions.

1. Is using pop-ups a good idea in general?
2. How do I have the pages that are in the pop-ups not coming up as "next page" in the navigation? Do I put them into a separate section down the bottom or something?

mnotermans5114

Hi Karyn,

2) Yes. A separate section with all the popups works.
1) In my opinion pop-ups are indeed evil ;-) But some people ( i do know a few ) swear by them.

Benefits of popups are offcourse you can easily drag them around. Keep them on a 2nd monitor open.
Cons are that popup blockers can block them. Generally considered a no-go in webdevelopment.

Regards,
Math

 

 

alockwood6897

Karyn,

I love popups. Used properly, they are a great way to parse out information that your users might need together, but separately. Like a popup that delivers a handout or instructions to an in-course activity. I also tend to use popups for a majority of my in-course videos.

Whether they are "good" or not is subjective. As @mnotermans5114 said, you can move them around and keep them open. This is particularly useful for content where your users should be referring to a handout or other provided content while doing an activity or test.

It's always best to put popups in their own chapter, so they can be easily found when you are building. I'd also suggest making sure you remove that chapter from the Table of Contents before publishing.

Andy

jasonadal

I'll add that I loathe pop-ups in my development because of accessibility. Popups can wreak havoc on screen readers, limited visibility, limited dexterity and/or those with sensitivity to sudden changes on a screen.

I'm not a fan of my current table of contents for much the same reason - the TOC is housed in an iFrame, another highly discouraged design element for accessibility reasons. Time allowing, I'll be working on a much friendlier TOC that doesn't get announced on every page (though I have it as the absolute last item in reading order).

mnotermans5114

@Jason... always love learning something. So iFrames are bad for accessibility ?
How about Lectora 17 when 'seamless play' is active ?

Answered my question already myself. Apparently you can use iframe, just need to watch carefully your content follows all rules ;-)

kpeverill3403

Thanks.

I've decided to use popups (I figure that the user has already approved popups from the LMS so it should carry) and I've now dumped the section in Resources.

Accessibility is my problem with pop-ups in general, but I can't figure out another way to show the information.

Thanks heaps folks,

kP

 

 

alockwood6897

You could always "fake" a popup effect within the course page. Clicking the button would trigger an On-click-Show action on a particular "popup". It would be a bit busier on the page from a development perspective, but it shouldn't be that much of an issue changing things over if you just want a simple, popup-like window that does not require another window/tab/page.

I don't know a lot about accessibility, so I don't know if this would be a better suggestion on that front.

jasonadal

I do quite a bit of what Andy's referring to, as accessibility is a must as a developer for government. One way I've worked through this, especially since I have a significant number of screens that change based on actions, is the use of Change Contents and aria to accomplish the goal that applies to new/changing text or new images.

I start with an empty text box either on the page if I wanted sighted users to read it or off the page if it's for sight impaired users. On the button that triggers the change, I add a Change Contents to update the text in that block. There are three keys that make this work.

1. Assign a class to the text block using the Description in the properties ribbon.
2. Add a JavaScript that assigns attribute "aria-live" to any text block with the designated class at the page level.
3. Use Change Contents that updates the text block to the button that has the "show" action.

This alerts screen readers that there has been a change to the text or the contents of a page. Screen readers do NOT read alt text for images that are initially hidden or shown through an action.

I posted an example in the Accessibility forum that uses an onClick to demonstrate. I haven't tried it with an onShow of an element, but my expectation is that it would work the same. For what it's worth, you can download the NVDA screen reader free for testing, which is what I use.

Using aria-live to announce changes

 

aelvnejd1871

Hi all,

I've been reading Lectora's e-book "Making eLearning Accessible" that states that lightboxes are disabled when you create a title with the option "Use Web Accessibility Settings" selected. But the e-book is from 2016 and I was wondering if there has been any improvements in that area. At Articulate they said in May 2015 (Storyline 2 Update 5) that they fixed an issue where the lightbox couldn't be closed using the accessibility features.

Does anyone know if Lectora has developed anything similar that makes it possible if we want to use the lightbox option in accessible titles?

mnotermans5114

Storyline2 is lacking on accessibility completely. Articulate improved it a bit with Rise, 360 and SL3, but still far behind Lectora when it concerns accessibility. Dont believe all company salesmen say.. when Sl3 hit the market they called it responsive... and in fact only the player scales its content to fit the view on the device. Not responsive at all thus.