Northstar Digital Literacy assessments and Northstar Online Learning (NSOL) modules Accessibility Conformance Report

Supports

Audio content that differs from text on the screen has captions available via CC button. Video content has YouTube subtitles available. Images important to the content have text explanations as alt text.

Supports

Audio-only content either duplicates text that is already on the screen, or captions for the audio can be enabled via CC button.

Video-only content: occasional video-like animated GIFs have corresponding alt text to explain the purpose/lesson of the GIF.

Supports

Captions are available for audio content read by a narrator, and either Northstar-generated or YouTube-generated captions are available on videos.

Does Not Support

Video content does not have a separate description of its contents, beyond the existing synced-audio recording.

Partially Supports

Much of the content utilizes semantic markup to make relationships of content more evident. A minority of the content utilizes 3rd-party plugins that do not richly convey structure and relationships (interactive tables such as in the Excel topic's assessment and NSOL content).

Supports

Northstar’s content has a meaningful sequence, with assessment questions or NSOL modules' practice content being intentionally ordered.

Partially Supports

Some content instructions rely on sensory characteristics (e.g. assessment orientation describing the location of parts of the screen), while others do not.

Supports

Variation of shapes/icons, as well as text-based content available to screen readers, are used as alternatives to color to convey meaning.

Supports

The audio can be muted or unmuted, and speed of audio playback is adjustable.

Partially Supports

Nearly all interactions are keyboard-usable. Exceptions are primarily pages that involve demonstrating drag-and-drop familiarity, or those demonstrating particular variations of mouse clicks. But even many drag-and-drop actions do support keyboard-based alternatives, however, such as through a dropdown-menu mechanism.

Supports

Keyboard traps are not present.

Not Applicable

Partially Supports

Some animated GIFs and instructional animation (e.g. music notes coming out of computer graphic’s speakers to denote sound) do not have controls. In such cases, the animations were designed to be calm/slow enough to not be overwhelming.

Other animations such as slowly pulsing highlights of screen to instruct on software interfaces, can be stopped by clicking on the section of the interface.

Supports

Generally there are not time limits on assessments and NSOL content. For users that are logged in and have not interacted with the screen in an extended period of time, they may be notified their session is about to expire/end, and are told to interact with the screen if they would like to extend it.

Supports

No content flashes at a frequency of 3+ times a second.

Supports

ARIA landmark roles are used to signify the banner (which includes heading content), navigation, and main content.

Does Not Support

Northstar’s assessments and NSOL pages are uniquely identified in their heading (h1) contents and in the navigation bar’s page descriptions, though do not currently update their page titles. Northstar assessments and NSOL content are not intended to be indexable/searchable via search engines or elsewhere within our website and have a mostly sequential character.

Supports

Focus order within Northstar has been intentionally designed to match the visual order and expected hierarchy/sequence of components.

Supports

While many links use imagery to emulate software that Northstar assesses and instructs on (e.g. browser buttons), text variants are provided in addition to the imagery for screen readers to interpret the meaning of the links.

Partially Supports

Some pages require drag and drop behaviors using gestures. Most of these interactions contain alternatives through clickable menus to send the draggable item to a certain droppable area via a single pointer. Some select slides that mimic software user interfaces (UIs) such as Microsoft Windows, do not have single-pointer alternatives.

Supports

Drag-and-drop behaviors revert draggable items' position if not dropped on a predefined, droppable destination.

Supports

Visual labels include programmatic labels.

Not Applicable

Supports

Northstar assessments and NSOL are available in English and Spanish. The currently active language is determinable programmatically.

Supports

Hover interactions do not trigger unexpected results.

Supports

Inputs to UI components do not change context.

Supports

In Northstar’s NSOL content, incorrect inputs result in alerts appearing on screen encouraging the user to take certain actions to succeed.

By design, Northstar’s assessment content does not provide errors generally when users provide incorrect input, in order to not give away answers.

Partially Supports

The vast majority of Northstar uses labels and descriptions to meet this criterion.

A minority of the content utilizes 3rd-party plugins that do not richly convey this information (interactive tables such as in the Excel topic's assessment and NSOL content).

Supports

HTML is developed according to specifications.

Partially Supports

The vast majority of Northstar meets this criterion.

A minority of the content utilizes 3rd-party plugins that do not richly convey this information (interactive tables such as in the Excel topic's assessment and NSOL content).

Not Applicable

No live videos are displayed in Northstar’s assessments and NSOL content.

Does Not Support

Audio description augmenting the audio track, to provide information about actions, characters, scene changes, and on-screen text, is unavailable.

Supports

Northstar is built to be mobile-responsive, and does not restrict the content's ability to adapt to changes in orientation.

Does Not Support

Given the digital-literacy level of audience, and given the context that many Northstar users access via shared computer labs, we do not encourage the use of browser-based autocomplete of forms for personal information, in case users would then see other users' info.

Partially Supports

Most core content has sufficient contrast. Select portions of the screen may not.

Partially Supports

Zooming into Northstar is an option, though with the criterion’s 200% zoom standard, some content is slightly cut off and may present problems, while some other placements of content may be out of alignment. A smaller zoom of 150% is less problematic.

Partially Supports

While much of the content uses text instead of imagery, practical limitations have led to maintaining imagery in the case of some emulated websites via screenshots and some emulated-software (e.g. Apple’s App Store emulation).

Partially Supports

Various of Northstar's topics are available as mobile-responsive and therefore show expected content when resized:

• Phone Keyboard Basics & Logging In - assessment
• Basic Computer Skills - assessment and NSOL
• Using Email - assessment
• Internet Basics - assessment and NSOL
• Telehealth - assessment and NSOL
• Cybersecurity Basics - assessment

Some Northstar topics are in progress or are optimized for desktop-sized experience only and do not provide disclosure widgets, pop-ups, or links to other views.

Partially Supports

Some of Northstar's non-text UI elements have sufficient contrast while others currently do not.

Partially Supports

The majority of Northstar can support increased settings of text spacing without issue. Clipping or wrapping occurs in some situations where the regular-sized content was already near a limit of UI sizing/spacing/positioning.

Partially Supports

Some UI elements show additional content on hover, such as for tooltips or the replay-audio button's playback controls. Both of these elements are dismissable via Escape key, otherwise persistent, meeting 2 of 3 criteria for this item. The audio-replay's playback controls are further hoverable, meeting the 3rd criteria. The 3rd-party tooltip utility we use does not support hovering over the text in the currently used version; however, the areas in Northstar where we use these tooltips are typically non-essential.

Supports

We provide a navigation menu within the assessments and NSOL as one way of navigating, and NSOL's dashboard contains other views to navigate to the desired content. The other standard way of navigating within content is via the Next button or response options when completing individual pages' tasks. Northstar's content is generally sequential in nature, being assessment questions or practice that builds upon concepts taught on previous slides.

Partially Supports

The vast majority of Northstar has meaningful headings and labels.

A minority of the content utilizes 3rd-party plugins that do not richly convey this information (interactive tables such as in the Excel topic's assessment and NSOL content).

Supports

Northstar allows browser user agents’ automatic display of halos/highlights of focused components.

Not Applicable

Change of language (e.g. some remaining English text within the Spanish version of Northstar) is not identifiable as different from Spanish in a programmatic way. However, in practice this is not significant because all relevant content is translated in whatever language the user's preference is set to. In rare cases where there may be a change of language, it is placeholder text that can be ignored.

Supports

Navigation menu is predictable in its display of links and current page.

Supports

Identification of pages’ parts, including navigation menu and its parts statuses, is consistent across pages.

Supports

Errors in NSOL content result in suggestions to the user for how to correctly accomplish the practice task.

Not Applicable

Supports

Corrective suggestions in NSOL utilize role="alert". Occasionally other tips or errors are shown via "toast" messages in upper-right corner, which utilize aria-live="polite" and role="alertdialog".

Partially Supports

Northstar’s text-based content is generally screen-reader friendly, with the main exception of some drag-and-drop behaviors and a 3rd-party plugin used for emulation of Excel software. 



Some of the content is video-based with an audio track synced to the video, but not an audio description of all the video’s contents.

Video-only content: occasional video-like animated GIFs have corresponding alt text to explain the purpose/lesson of the GIF.

Partially Supports

Zoom is possible within Northstar, ~150% without quality loss. Videos in NSOL content can be made full-screen if desired. A full-screen mode for the Northstar UI is also available to make the best use of the screen.

Supports

Color is not used as the sole indicator of content to be interacted with or to gain information from.

Supports

Captions are provided for videos, and for audio narration where it differs from the text content already on the screen.

Supports

Besides the captions mentioned for 302.4 above, Northstar content supports replaying audio and playing audio at varying speeds.

Not Applicable

Partially Supports

Northstar does not require fine motor control or simultaneous manual operation beyond what may be required by software that Northstar emulates. Even in those cases, generally keyboard usability is an option instead of mouse-only; there are exceptions to keyboard usability, such as some content assessing drag-and-drop operations.

Supports

Mouse and keyboard interaction are sufficient for Northstar usage.

Supports

Northstar aims to use intermediate-or-lower language level for text, allows users to ask their subscribing location's staff for clarifications of content, and directs users on what to practice when they do not pass Northstar assessments, if they have a learner account at one of Northstar's subscribing locations. Northstar itself then offers guided assistance when users unsuccessfully complete NSOL content.