“I’m Not a Racist,” is the Wrong Answer

You’ve heard it time after time — from celebrities, business owners, and many public figures. Someone says or does something blatantly racist; someone calls them out; and they defend themselves by saying, “I’m not a racist.” Being told we did something racist hurts, so we become defensive. We deflect. We deny it’s who we are, but it’s also the completely wrong thing to say.

This statement — “I’m not a racist” — completely absolves us of personal accountability. It says that I don’t need to change anything about myself. Instead, it put the burden back on the injured party. I’m not a racist. Therefore, you must have misinterpreted that terrible thing I said or did.

Robin DiAngelo, in her video Deconstructing White Privilege, makes the case that we define racism in specific ways that make it almost impossible to take personal accountability for our racist thoughts and actions. For example:

• Racism is intentional. I can only do something racist if I intend to.
• Racism is malicious. When we define racism this way, we can only be guilty of it if we intend harm.
• Racism is extreme. Either I hate all people of color entirely, or I’m not a racist at all.
• Only individuals can be racist. From this perspective, systematic racism cannot exist.

Once we put all of those together, it’s easy to say, “I’m not a racist.” Unfortunately, that statement also closes off any opportunity for growth or improvement. I cannot do better if I am unwilling to acknowledge my behavior. It would be like my wife confessing to me that I said or did something hurtful, and I responded with, “I’m not abusive.”

Instead, we should stop focusing on identity — in this case, the word racist — and focus on behavior instead. The question is not whether I am a racist. The problem is whether I said or did something racially offensive. When we shift focus, then we can focus on changing behavior. 

A couple of years ago, I said that I felt “gypped” about something. A friend of mine told me I had said something racist. I immediately had to fight down the urge to say, “But I’m not a racist,” and replaced it with, “I didn’t know that. Can you explain?” He did, and now I try to avoid using that word anymore.

My wife put it this way recently:

When it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., I’ve found it’s healthier to think, “I don’t want to be” instead of “I’m not.”

For example, if someone says, “That thing you just said/did is racist,” instead of thinking, “I’m not racist! I don’t hate black people!” it’s much healthier to think, “I don’t want to be racist. I should rethink what I’m saying/doing in light of that fact.” That shifts my thinking, so instead of jumping straight into denial and attempts to defend my character, I’m more likely to look at how my actions may be misrepresenting my intentions, whether I’ve overlooked something or acted in ignorance.

I encourage you to take this approach. The next time you feel the urge to say, “I’m not racist,” replace it with, “I don’t want to be racist.” Instead of digging into denial, learn to do better. That’s the only way we get better at anything. When we come face-to-face with our imperfections, we have a choice: we can deny and deflect, or we can engage and improve.

Captivate and JAWS: A Deeper Dive

In January, I posted a quick piece about the challenges Captivate 2019 output has with the JAWS 16 screen reader — more precisely, how the experience falls apart in Internet Explorer. I have since tested multiple versions of Captivate in various browsers, and here are some of those results.

Update: When I first published this, I misunderstood a criterion for keyboard accessibility in the Quiz results. I’ve corrected my results below. See the WebAIM Keyboard Accessibility page for more details.

Some Notes to Begin

• All tests were with HTML5 output. Flash support in modern browsers ends this year.
• These tests used the following Captivate/browser versions: 
  • Captivate 7 version 7.0.1.237 + Internet Explorer 11
  • Captivate 2017 version 10.0.1.283 + Edge version 81
  • Captivate 2019 version 11.5.1.499+ Edge version 81
• Chrome results are almost identical to Edge. Most corporate settings avoid Firefox. Despite my Firefox love, I did not thoroughly test it.
• I have no results for Captivate 2017 or 2019 with JAWS 16. There were significant compatibility issues between both versions of Captivate and JAWS 16, rendering the outputs unusable.

Reading Text

For these tests, I made some slides that handled accessibility text in the three main ways Captivate offers. I let JAWS read each slide with as little intervention as possible, and each slide had only one button to add a pause to the slide.

A text slide passed if it could read reliably with no intervention on my part. It could partially pass if I could get through all of the text with minimal frustrations or workarounds. It failed if I could not get it to read successfully.

Captivate 7 + JAWS 16

• Auto-Label – Partial Pass 
  • Read but needed repeated down-arrow presses to continue reading. Randomly said, “clickable.”
  • Layer order affects read order.
• Manual Item Labels – Partial Pass 
  • Read but needed repeated down-arrow presses to continue reading. Randomly said, “clickable.”
  • Layer order affects read order.
• Slide Accessibility – Pass. The text read as expected.

Captivate 7 + JAWS 2019

• Auto-Label – Partial Pass
  • Read but needed repeated down-arrow presses to continue reading.
  • Layer order affects read order.
• Manual Item Labels – Partial Pass
  • Read but needed repeated down-arrow presses to continue reading.
  • Layer order affects read order.
• Slide Accessibility – Pass. The text read as expected.

Captivate 2017 + JAWS 2019

• Auto-Label – Partial Pass
  • Read but needed repeated down-arrow presses to continue reading. Occasionally said, “blank.”
  • Layer order affects read order.
• Manual Item Labels – Partial Pass
  • Read but needed repeated down-arrow presses to continue reading. Occasionally said, “blank.”
  • Layer order affects read order.
• Slide Accessibility – Pass. The text read as expected.

Captivate 2019 + JAWS 2019

• Auto-Label – Partial Pass
  • I needed to press the down arrow to get to the next object or caption. Randomly said, “graphic.”
  • Layer order affects read order.
  • Read items a second time on tabbing to the button to continue.
• Manual Item Labels – Partial Pass
  • I needed to press the down arrow to get to the next object or caption. Randomly said, “graphic.”
  • Layer order affects read order.
  • Read items a second time on tabbing to the button to continue.
• Slide Accessibility – Partial Pass.
  • Read as expected.
  • Read items a second time on tabbing to the button to continue.

Of the three, Captivate 2019 performed the worst in this test. I could get through the content, but I’m concerned about a learner retaining the information if they are continually accommodating for the software.

Table of Contents

Having the TOC active produced nearly identical results in both browsers and all three versions of Captivate.

• If a learner tabs through all slide content, they will have to take through the entire TOC to get back to the beginning of the slide.
• Keyboard navigation is all but nonexistent. Activating an entry works occasionally. Sometimes the screen reader text does not match the selected entry.

You can get past these troubles by going to Preferences > Publish settings and activating Restrict keyboard tabbing to slide items only. Learners who depend on screen readers or keyboard navigation will have no access to the table of contents, but it’s not useful to them.

Buttons

For this test, I put together a slide that uses every button type in Captivate. I did not use click boxes. A button passed if I could tab to it and press Enter to activate it. It failed if I had to do any kind of workaround to get the button to work or if it did not work at all.

Captivate 7

Both JAWS 16 and JAWS 2019 behaved identically in this test.

• Image Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Text Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Transparent Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Smart Shape Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.

It’s also worth noting that the visual indicator for selected buttons is hard to see in IE11, making keyboard navigation extremely difficult for a sighted user.

Captivate 2017

• Image Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Text Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Transparent Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Smart Shape Button – Failed. Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.
• Buttons States. Failed – Required Shift + Enter to activate while JAWS was active.

Captivate 2019

• Image Button – Success.
• Text Button – Success.
• Transparent Button – Success.
• Smart Shape Button – Success.
• Button States – Success but didn’t reliably read the new state.
• Picture as Button – Failed. I could not get this to work with the keyboard.

In these tests, Captivate 2019 with JAWS 2019 was the clear winner. It was the easiest to navigate by far, but there are still some issues with using a picture as a button and successfully reading different text in other button states.

Text Entry Boxes

Text Entry Boxes (sometimes called TEBs) are very problematic from an accessibility perspective.

For this test, I had a single Text Entry Box on a slide with a Submit button. The slide passed if I had no problem hearing slide text, using the TEB and getting off the slide. It could partially pass if everything worked with coaxing. It failed if I got stuck on this slide or could hear no other content.

• Captivate 7 – Partial Pass. The TEB hijacked the screen reader. I had to press the up arrow a few times to get it to read slide content. The Submit button worked with Enter. I had the same results in JAWS 16 and JAWS 2019.
• Captivate 2017 – Fail. JAWS read nothing but the TEB. The Submit button worked with Enter.
• Captivate 2017 – Fail. JAWS read nothing but the TEB. The Submit button worked with Enter.

While I could get away from the Text Entry Box slide in Captivate 2017 and 2019, the learning experience was poor.

Quiz Slide

The built-in quiz slides are another problematic area. For this text, I built a simple multiple-choice question with two choices. Each element of the quiz slide passed or failed based on whether it worked predictably.

Captivate 7 + JAWS 16

• Screen Reading – Partial Pass. I had to press the down arrow repeatedly to read slide content.
• Feedback Reading – Fail. JAWS could not read the feedback.
• Keyboard Navigation – Fail. I could get to the answers but could select neither.
• Visual Indicator – Fail. There is no visible indicator for the answer selected or any other button on this slide.
• Submit Button – Fail. Had to use Shift + Enter to activate.
• Slide Exit – Fail. I could not progress. JAWS repeatedly said, “There are no span elements on this page.”

Captivate 7 + JAWS 2019

• Screen Reading – Partial Pass. I had to press the down arrow repeatedly to read slide content.
• Feedback Reading – Fail. JAWS could not read the feedback.
• Keyboard Navigation – Pass. I had to tab to the block of answers, then switch to arrow keys to navigate them. This is how radio buttons are supposed to work.
• Visual Indicator – Fail. There is no visible indicator for the answer selected or any other button on this slide.
• Submit Button – Pass.
• Slide Exit – Fail. I could not progress. JAWS repeatedly said, “There are no span elements on this page.”

Captivate 2017 + JAWS 2019

• Screen Reading – Partial Pass. I had to press the down arrow repeatedly to read slide content.
• Feedback Reading – Partial pass. The feedback read if I pressed the down arrow.
• Keyboard Navigation – Pass. I had to tab to the block of answers, then switch to arrow keys to navigate them. This is how radio buttons are supposed to work.
• Visual Indicator – Partial pass. Visually indicates when you are at the block of answers but not which answer you selected. The Submit button has a clear visual indicator.
• Submit Button – Fail. Had to use Shift + Enter to activate.
• Slide Exit – Fail. I could not progress. JAWS repeatedly said, “There are no span elements on this page.”

Captivate 2019 + JAWS 2019

• Screen Reading – Partial Pass. Read well, but read the choices before I navigated to them.
• Feedback Reading – Partial pass. The feedback read if I pressed the down arrow.
• Keyboard Navigation – Pass. I had to tab to the block of answers, then switch to arrow keys to navigate them. This is how radio buttons are supposed to work.
• Visual Indicator – Partial pass. Visually indicates when you are at the block of answers but not which answer you selected. The Submit button has a clear visual indicator.
• Submit Button – Pass.
• Slide Exit – Fail. I could not progress. JAWS repeatedly said, “There are no span elements on this page.”

Of these, Captivate 2019 performed the best, but that is faint praise. The quiz slides remain unusable from an accessibility point-of-view.

Other Tests

These are other items that I either did not focus on heavily in my testing or are specific to particular versions of Captivate.

• Widgets and Interactions – I did not exhaustively test these. The few that I did had problems either with the screen reader, keyboard navigation, or both.
• Interactive Video – I could get through an interactive video in Captivate 2019 as long as I avoided built-in quiz slides. However, using custom buttons can generate a lot of false reads. Proceed with caution.
• VR/360º Slides – These are specific to Captivate 2019 and are entirely inaccessible for keyboard users.

Conclusion

Captivate 2019 is an overall improvement in terms of accessibility with JAWS. Compatibility with JAWS is crucial because it is still the most popular screen reader globally, and it dominates the United States government sector. Adobe has a long way to go before eLearning developers can have confidence their modules will provide a good experience to disabled learners.

Here are some things I’d like to see:

• Output standards-compliant HTML.
• Output real text. Captivate outputs text as images. Using actual text will greatly help screen readers.
• Deprecate or replace interactions that don’t work with keyboard navigation.
• Use ARIA tagging for interactive elements.

If you are developing eLearning modules in Captivate, don’t just assume accessibility works. Use a freely available screen reader like NVDA for Windows or VoiceOver on macOS. Then close your eyes and see if you can navigate your module. See where you can make improvements, research, and ask for help.

Remember that accessibility may affect only a small percentage of your learners, but those efforts affect 100% of how they interact with your products.

Tumult Whisk

Tumult Whisk

Tumult Whisk’s integrated live preview breaks the tedious cycle of writing HTML, saving the file, then reloading and viewing the page in the browser. Combining the writing phase with the viewing phase clarifies the effects of your changes and speeds up the overall process of making a web page. W3C-based validation will red-underline any mistakes. It uses the same rendering engine found in Safari, so it is not only standards compliant, but also very fast.

If you remember HyperEdit from the early days of Mac OS X, then Whisk should feel very familiar. Its preview pane and page validation tools are welcome additions to my workflow, and the app footprint is about 20% that of my current code editor.

68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

The Technium: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice

Kevin Kelly shares wisdom on his 68th birthday. It’s wonderfully nonlinear and filled with recurring themes. It’s like reading a modern-day collection of proverbs.

It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of you.

Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.

A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.

Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.

Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.

Booklets.io

Booklets.io – Bite sized learning

Bite sized learning for creatives. Learn concepts from some of the world’s best designers.

The site is well-organized, beautifully designed, and filled to the brim with helpful information.

Adobe Captivate Adds New Assets!

Adobe Captivate (2019 release) adds new assets!

We have introduced new assets to the Asset Panel, so that you can create beautiful engaging eLearning content in minutes. We’ve added few quick start projects with new layouts and interactions, ten new characters with multiple poses, new images, and videos. These assets will be added automatically into the Asset Panel. You need not update the product.

If you use Captivate 2019, these are some decent resources — especially if you have limited design experience or no ability to collaborate with a designer.

WERNER’S NOMENCLATURE OF COLOURS

Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours

A recreation of the original 1821 color guidebook with new cross references, photographic examples, and posters designed by Nicholas Rougeux

Absolutely stunning.

What Is the Oldest Computer Program Still in Use?

MIT: Technology Review: What Is the Oldest Computer Program Still in Use?

In 1958, the United States Department of Defense launched a computerized contract-management system that it dubbed Mechanization of Contract Administration Services, or MOCAS (pronounced “MOH-cass”). The system was designed to use the latest in computation and output technology to track contracts in progress and payments to vendors.

Fifty-seven years later, it’s still going.

by Glenn Fleishman

Utterly mind-blowing. But aged programs like these present a challenge as fewer and fewer coders learn these older languages. The solution seems simple: modernize them. Unfortunately, that costs time and money, and most government bodies don’t have room in their budgets for such efforts.

Case in point: a government agency I support requires all of their trainings be compatible with Internet Explorer 11 because one of their primary internal systems relies on ActiveX controls only found in IE. It’s created issues, but my team has to keep working around this requirement for the foreseeable future.

MOCAS faces the same dilemma:

There have been efforts in the past to build a full replacement for MOCAS, and they’ve sputtered due to cost, complexity, and transition planning. Because the system handles so much that’s in progress and critical to the DoD, any new system has to overlap and perfectly hand off everything underway.

Ugly Gerry

Link: Ugly Gerry

I’m always interested in how art becomes a means to communicate social and cultural movements. However, I’ve never seen a font used that way — until now.

Meet Ugly Gerry, a font made of gerrymandered congressional districts.

Captivate Text Entry Box Tips

Text entry boxes (TEB) can be useful tools to assess learners’ progress or to simulate web forms or other applications. Here are some tips for a smooth experience with Captivate’s TEBs.

Text Entry Boxes and the Timeline

In you are navigating through the module by keyboard, it’s possible to trigger text entry boxes on slide enter. (This may be true of anything with a keyboard shortcut of Enter.)

To avoid this problem, move the TEB 0.10 seconds from the beginning of the slide’s timeline (see Figure 1).

Checking Against a Variable

Captivate’s built-in validation for text entry boxes can be problematic for accessibility. To account for this, create a custom button and assign an action to it that checks against the variable associated with the given TEB. This will allow you to create and navigate to a dedicated slide for feedback rather than Captivate’s built-in feedback, which will be invisible to a screen reader. You can also make other elements dependent on a correct TEB answer in this way.

Sample

--IF--
Text_Entry_Box_1 is equal to John OR
Text_Entry_Box_1 is equal to john OR
Text_Entry_Box_1 is equal to JOHN
--THEN--
Jump to Slide 34
--ELSE--
Go to Next Slide

Important: Be sure to account for alternate spellings and answer formats.

Disabling the Text Entry Box Button

If you are using a custom button for your text entry box, you can hide the default button.

1. Select the TEB on the slide or in the timeline.
2. In the Properties tab, assign it a keyboard shortcut. Since I want the learner to interact with the button instead of just hitting Enter, I usually make is something complicated, so it can’t be triggered by accident.
3. Once you have the keyboard shortcut assigned, you can uncheck Show Button in the Properties tab

Conclusion

Text entry boxes are a great tool, and Captivate’s built-in features are a good place to get you started. If you want to start taking your text entry box use to new levels of interactivity and accessibility, I hope these tips give you a good start.