samigo: accessibility: Remove the Background color and image options for assessments
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Tiffany Stull November 14, 2019 at 3:22 PM
this ticket was originally created as a copy of the local one I made at UVA, with the intent for the change to be contributed back.
We discussed two reasons for removing the background color option:
With poor color choices, it can create accessibility issues for students.
We were not aware of a pedagogical use for the feature.
When we initially looked into removing the background color/image option at UVA in early October, a database search revealed over 2100 assessments with a background color or image specified, belonging to more than 350 unique users. As I mentioned in my previous comment, some of these are power users who have been working with Samigo for many years.
The option was removed at UVA on October 21st, and re-enabled today. Given that multiple instructors have made the case that they use the feature as a proctoring aid (and, in some cases, have successfully caught students attempting to cheat with the implementation of the background color), I would not advise removing it at this time.
A possible improvement to the feature could be to reduce the palette of available colors to select. However, you can enter any hex value into the text box, and the available color picker is not keyboard accessible, so I don't know how you would restrain the options to specific colors.
Laura Gekeler November 14, 2019 at 1:14 PM
I'm sorry Tiffany, I did see your comment but didn't correlate the time with the time the ticket was closed. Your comment also started with, "when we removed the background color/image at UVA" which I took to be antecdotal evidence from UVA to add weight to any community decision to be made, rather than a rationale for closing the community ticket.
If UVA is reverting the change, would you be in favor of re-opening this community ticket so that we can continue the decision about what tactic the community distribution will take? It would also be great if you could continue to inform us in what UVA has tried/will try.
Tiffany Stull November 14, 2019 at 11:53 AM
I don't think we want to add more color features to tests, but five instructors contacted us upset that the feature had been removed because they had a very valid pedagogical use for it, which is to prevent cheating. Two of these instructors are power users who have been using Samigo for years and recommend it to colleagues. Based on their comments and concerns, we are reverting the change to remove the feature.
Tiffany Stull November 14, 2019 at 11:35 AM
Laura, please see the comment I posted this morning when I closed the ticket.
Laura Gekeler November 14, 2019 at 10:42 AM
This has been marked closed/won't fix but I don't see any explanation of that decision and not much of a discussion of alternatives. I thought Shawn's idea was a good one, "An alternative fix could be to add an additional option to change the text colour of all of the controls." in fact education could be done by only offering text/background color combinations that meet accessibility criteria.
Whenever we mark closed/won't fix an explanationn should be offered.
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The assessment settings in _Tests & Quizzes_ allow you to add a *background color* and *background image* for a quiz. You can enter any hex value for the color and any image url for the image background.
All quiz questions, unless the quiz author manually changes the text color of each question, have black text. Even if the instructor does manipulate text color for questions that allow the use of the CKEditor, True False questions will not allow you to change the color of the True and False options. All content surrounding the questions (e.g. the question and part numbers, part titles, and instructions for formatting answers to Numeric Response questions) are in black text as well.
Because you can add any background color or image, you can easily create quizzes where poor contrast between text and background makes the quiz content inaccessible. Additionally, you can create quizzes with colors which make it hard for students with cognitive or learning disabilities to focus on the questions and answers.
I propose to remove the background color/image option for improved accessibility.