Issues with NVDA screen reader and New Quizzes

krista_croghan
Community Member

I am a Canvas administrator at our college, looking for direction or answers. We are having the following problems with the NVDA screen reader in Canvas New Quizzes:

  1. NVDA won’t read the question stem for a multiple-answer question type. It reads the answer choices, but not the question stem.
  2. NVDA stops reading when it encounters a bolded word.

We've looked around Canvas Community and Guides with no exact match to what we're experiencing. According to Canvas Accessibility Standards, each Canvas feature and release is manually tested with the following screen reader and browser combinations: 

  • JAWS (latest version for Chrome/Firefox on Windows)
  • NVDA (latest version for Chrome/Firefox on Windows)
  • VoiceOver (latest version for Safari/Chrome on Macintosh and iOS mobile)
  • Talkback (latest version for Android mobile)

We did try VoiceOver and it does not have the same issues. However, we are a PC-only environment and our Testing Center doesn’t have access to Apple Devices to administer exams with screen readers. So that’s not a practical solution for us.

Canvas Support suggested we contact NVDA. Level 1 support at NVDA referred the questions to their developers and we have not yet received a response. 

We also have read in the Canvas Community that Classic Quizzes may have fewer accessibility issues. However, we have been moving our entire institution over to New Quizzes since that is the future, so it's not practical for us to go backward now.

Does anybody have any insight or suggestions?

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