Hi Damian,

We see WCAG compliance as increasingly important, and recognize that having the app validate and reasonably compliant with various standards, like 508, is important in many deployments. We have a project spinning up after major UI work is done on the current release to take an inventory of where the application is doing well, and where it is not, so that we can prioritize and address the most important areas of improvement.

Thanks,

Greg

So  now the "current release" has become te "previous release", is there a roadmap you can share on WCAG compliance?

Olivia Teich wrote on 10/31/2009 7:37 PM:

We have been making some incremental improvements to accessibility in Jive SBS over the last several releases (and have made good overall progress since 2.5).

Could you elaborate? I have really no idea what progress is being made

because the devices I try can not even login to these forums because the

login is inaccessible.

As this has become more of a priority for our customers, we have also undertaken a more comprehensive assessment project, as Greg described. Through that and our work with customers and partners, we have identified several new areas for improvement. I invite you to share any that are of particular importance in your community as well.

It is not all that easy to restrict the list to the areas of

particular importance. I'll try to limit myself to three issues

Access without Javascript. Certain areas of the site are only accessible

if you have Javascript enabled. I can live without the nice autocomplete

feature of the search, it just means I have to type the whole search

key. I can not live with a reply screen that requires Javascript and

simply refuses to post if Javascript is not enabled. Same for the "New",

"Your stuff", "History" and "Browse" links. And especially the links to

navigate to the next page of issues in a community or messages in a

thread. (Its incompatibility with the regular back button of browsers

should be  sufficient reason to change that regardless of accessibility

issues.)

Javascript should be used to enhance the user experience, but should

never be mandatory to get access to certain content.

Documentation. The end-user documentation you have is to little, and the

quality is to low. Lots of behaviour that end users have to deal with is

not described at all and what is there is an endless summation with

insufficient visible structure to be readable. (And don't get me started

on the developer documentation.)

Clean HTML. In many places you are putting stuff in the HTML and then

hiding it with CSS. For instance, every user gets to see all the links

to remove and expire announcements when he visits a Jive site in Windows

Mobile. Only when they click on the links, they get an error they are

not an admin.

Just write the if statement in your .ftl.

Where possible, we will address the most significant issues in patch releases; other, bigger projects, are slated for our spring 2010 release.

Could you elaborate on what you are planning for the spring release?

Olivia Teich wrote on 11/2/2009 10:08 PM:

A few of the recent improvements include:

• HTML cleanup, including the addition of labels for many form fields (still a few more to go), improved table markup, including table header tabs...

• Addition of a search button to the search field in the navigation bar

• Browser-adjustable font sizes

 

What version of SBS are you using? Is it heavily customized?

2.5.7. Only significant customizations are an extra header (adds insane

amount of scrolling, but not something Jive can help) and integration

with the Adobe SSO portal.

>> I try can not even login to these forums because the login is inaccessible.

I have not heard about login accessibility issues before but it does not sound good. What communities are you trying to login to? Can you share any more details on what is inaccessible?

I browse to http://www.jivesoftware.com/jivespace/, click login, enter

u/p, submit and never get off the login page anymore. Windows Mobile 6.1

and 6.5.

>> Could you elaborate on what you are planning for the spring release?

 

We are still in the planning stages, but we are looking in particular at ways to improve accessibility of the navigation bar.

And the "bigger projects" you mentioned?

I meant to add:

Thanks for the additional details. Windows Mobile is not currently a supported browser, but we'll see if there is a way we can at least get you through the front door.