Monkey see, monkey….
Does anybody know anything about the accessibility of online survey products like Surveymonkey.com and Zoomerang.com? I’ve looked at a sample survey on Surveymonkey and could not even tell if it was a true HTML form, let alone if it was accessible. For giggles, I sent it to a visually impaired friend and asked her what she thougt of it. To my surpise she liked it alot. So dispite not being standards based, it still seems accessible. Would you use it for a small audience that may include some people with disabilities?
I’ve looked at both of them before (admittedly quite some time ago) and found them to be an abomination in terms of the code. I mean, they went to incredible lengths to simulate checkboxes and radio buttons with JavaScript and custom images, when they could have easily just used plain old HTML radio buttons and check boxes.
Having said that, perhaps those custom check and radio images was their “differentiator”? In any case, I’m surprised to hear that your visually impaired friend was ok with it — was she using a screen reader?
Yes, she was using JAWS. She said she didn’t have to go into “forms mode” to use the survey. I’m torn about using Surveymonkey; it seems to work, but it defies any sort of standards. I’m hoping some others will write in with their experiences. Thanks for your input!
I sent email to support @ surveymonkey.com on Oct. 20: “Wondering how accessible Survey Monkey is for people with disabilities….can you tell me? Thanks, Joann Starks, NCDDR.” Response received later that day: “Joann, We currently aren’t 100% accessible. We are working towards this, but I don’t have an ETA yet. Thanks, Chris Finley”
(09/29/2003) Subject: Is Zoomerang Sec. 508 compliant? “I am considering using Zoomerang for a survey activity, and I wondered if it is accessible to people with disabilities. Has it been reviewed for accessibility according to the Guidelines of the W3C’s Web Accessibilty Initiative? (http://www.w3.org/WAI) Or, with the Guidelines of Section 508? (http://www.section508.gov/) Thanks, Joann Starks, SEDL/NCDDR” Discussion Thread †Response: (Susannah, 10/06/2003 07:30 AM). “Hi, Thank you for contacting Zoomerang. Currently, Zoomerang does not meet Section 508 guidelines. However, we are constantly updating our application to include new features and we will include this in our list of requested enhancements. Thank you for your comments.”
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