Category: Cram Session
Hey,
Ever since I started college, at least one professor per semester has decided that it would be amazing to use blackboard. It's an online course utility type of thing where you can get files, talk to your professor, etc.
I can never make it work with jaws. Actually, I can never really make it work period lol. Naturally, my brilliant mind decided taking an online class that completely relied on this thing would be a marvelous idea lmao.
So. has anyone else's uni used this wooonderful system? If so, how have you dealt with it, made it work, killed it etc?
Advice would be awesome, but venting would work too!
When I was in college, many professors used it. It was buggy and annoying, but usually, I did get it to work. Mostly, when I couldn't, it was down and no one else could get on it either. Then again, I graduated in 2006, so they may have updated the software. Have you tried another screenreader with it like NVDA? Sometimes, it handles these kinds of things very well. If worse comes to worst, you might just want to speak with your professors and explain the situation. Perhaps, they can modify assignments, if they're group discussions, or give regular ones to you through e-mail.
I've been using it for three years now with Jaws and mostly there haven't been any problems, although admittedly I never used the chat feature. The only thing is occasionally I couldn't read inside the frames with the vertual PC cursor - I would have to repeatedly toggle it while tabbing and shift tabbing until it starts behaving itself. For the most part I've been quite happy with it though - it just takes some getting used to.
I'm taking an online Chemistry course and lab (Yeah, Chem online? I could certainly vent about that and I might drop, but that's a different story) and I'm using Vista. I'm in my fourth semester of college now and I've used Vista for all of them.
Vista works fine with Jaws for the most part. I've been able to find, save, and open files, search the site and read messages on the class message board. Opening anything sent to my inbox has been a bit tricky ... I've had to go into forms mode and tab around until I could find the open message link.
I'll admit that opening attachments can be kind of frustrating at times. I think Vista screws around with Flash or something, and I often have to tab over in the address bar to the box that says "Are you sure you want to run this active X control?" and allow that to run before I can deal with any files on the site. This is really frustrating but I think that might be my fault...
Brice
My college uses mymathlab and the one for stats and Myitlab that I guess are based on the blackboard system. Mymathlab uses flash, not sure about the others. I have to use them this semester, and have to have a tutor for the statistics.
okay, some here might not understand what is blackboard. its basicly an education sweet software, runs on university server that most universities use nowadays. i've been using blackboard since 2006, with different universities, haven't encounter any dramatic issues with it. just like Stevo said, the chat feature aint work. but, as far as i know, blackboard can work from IE6.2 and above. i'm using jaws, and have no issue with it at all. you might get an errore message every now an then, or another pop out window asking to check your IE setting etc etc, just follow the prom, or ignore it, it is all fine.
the only anoying bit i have with blackboard is with the mail feature. i'm okay recieving and read internal mails from students and lecturer, but i'm having some issue on replying it. maybe cause, it is on a frame thinggy, or, on a kerser thinggy, that jaws, for some reason, dont seems to liking it too much. but, if you let your lecturer/tutor know that you can't use that mail feature, they might able to send it thru to your email mailbox instead of the blackboard mailbox.
personally, i've tried using blackboard with Mac, it is all working great. also, i've use SAToGo with blackboard as well, however, haven't try out the mail feature using SAToGo.
i can't tell you much from NVDA prospective, as i don't use NVDA often enough to use it for Blackboard.
maybe, if you wanna post your particular problem that you encounter with blackboard, we might able to help you here.
Thanks guys!
Nice to know there's some hope after all lol. Yes, I was considering taking my chem lab online because there were no more open sections that weren't at 8 Am. and no. 8 AM and dangerous chemicals plus me equals no more FIU campus lol, but fate told me not to do lab all together this semester soooo.
Honestly my problem with blackboard has always been that sometimes it'll login and jaws will then not read anything on the page. like if it were blank. I get that sometimes, sometimes I don't. Emails also give me a problem.
I think I might try it with NVDA though. I've never actually used the thing itself, but have heard really good things about it.
Luckily the class I'm taking now is just an american civ class so it shouldn't require finicky, complicated stuff.
Thanks for the comments =)
i use blackboard for my classes and have been for a few years now. One thing i have noticed is that jaws often loses focus when i click on the disscussion board feature part of it. I still have yet to figure out how to reply to a disscussion board topic because i think the security dialogue box comes up than and i can't seem to navigate threw it. I also think when you reply you have to go to a drop down menu some where there too. So, if someone could help with that. But geting assignments on it is ok for me.
try to upgrate your jawa. some blackboard side require jawa install. also, to reply to discussion board, try to click the topic as open in new window, and reply from there. that could be easier.
regarding the security message, try to add your college/university website, particular to the blackboard homepage to your security acception list. that would help to ease the problem. good luck
oh ok thanks i will try that then and let you know how it goes.
We use web ct which can act a bit retarded sometimes. At the end of the day, I'm sure theres some law that says that they have to make ajustmants for you, so perhaps all it'll take is a few nice words to some people asking if you can send work in via email or something?
I'm using hal and most of the stuff is usable, but I kno some sr's don't really like the amount of frames there are on the page which is a bit of a problem for web ct. One other annoying thing is that if theres a pdf thats been put up, yoo can't right click and do save as, it doesn't work so you have to open it in your brouser. The workaround for this is to delete the pdf filetype in folder options > filetypes; you'll get a nice download box when you open a pdf now.
Some of the stuff where you submit work is done in inaccessible java, but if you don't mind clicking around a bit, you can more often than not find what your looking for.
Not overly helpfull, but if you have any questions I can give them a go if you want.
I use to really hate blackboard. and yeah, my online class is all about the discussion board.
for replies, if you get into that security dialogue, and root to pc, and click the close symbol, it goes away. You'll want to turn off visual editor of course, so you can actually see the forms to write in.
I use jaws 9 with xp, and have used 11 on win7, and the discussion board is the only thing I've had an issue with really.
But blackboard is really annoying. moodle for the win!
I had a class that used Blackboard, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. My main problem was that I couldn't always get into the part where it has the list of sections (like mail, discussion board, calendar, and I forgot what other sections) and if you have new content, so I couldn't always get into the parts that would have been available to me. That was because either it wouldn't show, or the screenreader wasn't catching it. (I was mostly using SA because I didn't have a full updated version of JAWS at the time. My school used to use Web CT, and I liked that much better than Blackboard Vista which is what they use now; I don't remember having much of any problems with the Web CT though.
ok thanks because my american government class this semester will be using blackboard for like everything for sumiting assignments and using the discussion board part too. Oh yah, how do you turn off visual editor?
I've used both blackboard and web ct. I find blackboard a bit more jaws friendly then web ct.
My main problem in web ct is when the site refreshes itself, it would crash my browser. Also, say in your class folder your prof put an assignment or a reading you have to download, you can't just click it and expect it to download. It will open something, and at the bottom, the name of the file you want to download should appear and you would click on it again. It makes no sense why you should have to do that every time but you do.
In terms of replying, and reading mail and discussion boards? I would route my jaws to pc and left click on the subject to open it in a new page. On it, there should be a reply link.
Hope this helps
I've been using blackboard for 2 years and like it. It works pretty good with jaws 10 and win xp. It says not to use IE 8, but it actually works with it for the most part. I never tried the discussion forem feature. the mail works pretty well for me. Hell, sometimes I even send my emails through blackboard instead of webmail.
I love blackboard. The chat is a java applit I believe and those are often hit or miss but I like the survice.
as for the visual editor question, it's a link right under the subject box I think. just click it and it should turn off.
does anybody know what the warning security deal is? I'll be using it again this fall. I think it might have something to do with java/adobe, because it looks like it's trying to open some PDF file.
Think it is warning you about eether Java or telling you that a cookie will be stored.
Well i used black bord at my old school, but did not have much luck. My teachers use to send scand documents for online reading and sence they were scand I could not read them. Is there anyway to get around that? maby coppy andpaste it into open book? would that work. I could not navigate it verry well majorly a pain in my ass. same problems that everyone else is having
to post 20: yes, if you open it in openbook with your scann document, most time you able to read it okay, but don't expect to have full accuracy. talk to your disability services people, and let them know that you need all those document in an assessable format, either in doc or rtf or txt.
to post 18 and 19: the pop out screen most time is a warning, cause it does use cooky on blackboard, and sometime the pop out screen might be a Java related problem. it also can be if an topic admin trying to send out anouncement, usually it appear as a pop out screen once you on blackboard, or on the particular topic of interest.
I am having to use black board first time this semester and all I have to do is go and look at my work do it and post it online threw black board, My teacher says he wants me to deal with learning to use black board because he doesn't like to chekc his email, Find by me as long as I can use it. I have learned how to do a small bit. so no probs so far here any more.
I use blackboard, and we have discussions that don't work very well with jaws. sometimes it won't read tha page when I click on the reply link o and posting a new topic is weird until I realized I had to click on where it says "thread" then it opens and I can do it. I've never used the mail feature. overall it's ok... not my fav site but ok.
I guess everyone's story is different. I'm a junior in college and, until now, have never used Blackboard, MyMathLab, or MySpanishLab. I've never had too much trouble coming up with alternative assignments (which have often been much more work anyway) and getting my profs to approve them, that is, until now with my rehab prof. Haha, she was talking about equality versus equity the other day. Equality, for example, would be a company installing a wheelchair ramp at the back of its building so that Joe Bob can get inside. Equity, however, would be if Joe Bob could wheel up a ramp near the front and go into the same door as all the other employees and consumers. So anyway, right after this lesson, I found she was the first prof ever to refuse accommodation to me in this area. Pretty funny, huh? She was like, "Well, such-and-such a professor uses it just fine." Of course, he can probably afford the newest version of JAWS. I have Vista and Window-Eyes 7 and, because of the latter, cannot upgrade to IE 9 or Firefox 4. So obviously, even though my Flash and JAVA are up to date, I can't get Blackboard to even boot without totally freezing my system. Even in 2009 when I started out, and everything was brand-new, Blackboard hardly functioned for me. I've tried NVDA with it, but it only half-works. I then went to the Office of Disability Accommodations and used one of their computers, which has JAWS 12 on it. Worked like a fuckin' charm, but where the issue of equity comes in is that I can only go and do my rehab assignments during office hours, and not in the comfort of my own home. My prof is such a hypocrite, ha. I have half the mind to challenge her, but you know what happens when you challenge a professor--even if you're ethically and technically right, she/he can make your life a living hell. Meanwhile, I'm working on obtaining a WE upgrade from my rehab counselor and hoping that will fare well, because I abhor JAWS and don't want to get it just so I can use eCampus. I'm figuring if I get Win-Eyes renewed, that should help immensely.
All my classes use blackboard, well two of the three so far, the third one will too, but the professor hasn't gotten around to getting his course on there. I haven't had any trouble with blackboard yet, mostly because I have only been grabbbing files and reading the assignment announcements. but the discussions and the thing with replying to e-mails are somethings to keep in mind for me.
I'm using Blackboard this semester for one of my classes, and in fact, I think that's what the whole university uses for anything they put online for the classes. I don't much like it, but I can navigate it alright; it usually helps to use the Links List feature of the screenreader and then arrow up and down or press the first letter of what you want. Posting to it has been working fine for me as well. I tried using it with the latest version of Firefox, but for whatever reason, I couldn't. So I had to use IE 7 and it worked fine, except for the fact that IE won't let me download anything. I think that's a problem with my IE in general though. But, I did learn that it works well with Firefox 3.6, so now that's what I'm using. I'm so glad I can use Blackboard with Firefox now because at least I can now download anything I need to with no problems. Also, I don't have the Microsoft Office suite on my computer, so for awhile, I could not read or work with Word documents at home. However, I recently learned about and have been using this free program called IBM Lotus Symphony, and it has been a great help to me. I can now open and save documents in different file formats, including Word 2007, open Powerpoint documents (I haven't tried working in one yet), and open and use spreadsheets. For my screenreader, I'm using the latest version of NVDA.
I haven't tried nvda with blackboard because I am fine with working on it with jaws but that does sound like good that nvda can work on it too, but nvda does a lot of things to rub me the wrong way so if I don't have to use it, I won't.
Links list is a good idea. I've been using screen find, and that works pretty well, too.
yeah, the find command is useful, but I don't use the links list much
Okay, help me out here. I was on Blackboard today on the aforementioned disabilities office computers. Well, I can do discussion, check grades and mail, even look at weblinks. But downloading files? Dont even get me started. I had to have a friend strip them off the site for me hah. How do I do that? Lol I feel so technologically impaired. XD
ah, the good old history of downloading files with blackboard huh. it depends on what web browser you using, and what version. It also depends on what sort of file is that. PDF will be the hardest, cause for some whatever reason, it really wanting to open on the browser itself. if that happen, you need to then jaws kerser it, till you come across 'save as', and left click on it. then, by right a popup window will occur asking you where to save and so on.
if you using a PC, , in general, i found that firefox will be perhaps one of the best browser working with blackboard.
ah, coolio thanks! yeah, I had a hard time with the pdf no problem with the others.
@Buttercup: How odd, I thought Firefox wasn't supported for Blackboard. Maybe I was confusing that with MySpanishLab. Yeah. That's what I did.
On the disabilities office's computer, I have no idea what web browser versions are installed, but I'm sure they're up-to-date, since JAWS is also. I will try what you suggested.