[SIMS] SIMs accessibility

[Willott]

Hi guys,

We have a user who has eyesight difficulties. We've set the display resolution to a point where they can see icons etc suitably, but then have hit an issue with SIMs. The menu bar is displaying at a suitable size, but input boxes and the timetable print out display with very small text. Does anyone know of a way of altering display sizes within SIMs? When I've got a bit more time I'll ask on SupportNet as well, but I know there are quite a few SIMs gurus on here...

Cheers

Will

[TechMonkey]

sorry no help but SIMS is not very accessible. We have a blind teacher here and using SIMS with it is hit and miss. Some text boxes have descriptions some don't, tab order seems to change depending on the page you are on, some areas are impossible to get to via key combos & something don't read at all.

It's blooming lucky there is no legislation to ensure people with difficulties aren't excluded due to software......

[Willott]

I'm hoping you missed the sarcasm tags there... I'll head over to SupportNet later on (once I've found the relevant legal bits and bobs) and have a dicscussion on there (as suggested by my LEA).

[TechMonkey]

I was hoping the sheer amount of sarcasm loaded in to that one on sentence would ooze through the internet and out of the page.

[Willott]

I think my smoothie box must've filtered it out...

[vikpaw]

sorry no help but SIMS is not very accessible. We have a blind teacher here and using SIMS with it is hit and miss. Some text boxes have descriptions some don't, tab order seems to change depending on the page you are on, some areas are impossible to get to via key combos & something don't read at all.

It's blooming lucky there is no legislation to ensure people with difficulties aren't excluded due to software......

Agreed. It's a real pain for me as i like to use scripting and the tab order on some pages changes between upgrades, which is really sloppy!

@willott - there is a document somewhere with recommended resolution and as far as i recall it is fixed at 1024*768. That is what it's hard coded to. If you go much larger you'll find that clicking on menu item 3 actual clicks menu item 5 or some such confusion.

I had a really huge pain with this at last school as staff wanted to use 800*600 but we had to force it up. I don't suppose using the built in tools like magnifier in Windows will be much use or particular practical but it may be your only option.

Once, using a massive resolution that my boss had on a 22" screen, some of the layering went wrong so elements on the page moved enough to fall into a different layer somehow, or at least became hidden. It was a nightmare to troubleshoot!

If you use SLG or another web based access mechanism you may have more joy. In order to meet accessibility requirements you might look at such a product, perhaps PARS or TeachersWebFolder might be cheaper, though not give full functionality. I know you shouldn't have to do this, but a change request in SIMS could be a long wait.