Service Overview
Poll Everywhere is an interactive platform that polls participants using multiple-choice, open-ended, clickable, and ranking questions.
Testing Parameters
In March 2022, the Digital Accessibility Office’s Assessment & Usability team conducted an accessibility test of the Poll Everywhere platform on desktop and mobile browsers. A quiz was created using the basic plan that included multiple-choice, open-ended, clickable image, and ranking question types. Other question types, like word clouds, were not tested in this instance.
Poll Everywhere Accessibility Status
The Digital Accessibility Office has found the Poll Everywhere platform to be relatively accessible to individuals who utilize assistive technologies (AT) and alternative forms of access. However, this finding is conditional based on the question format.
We found the multiple-choice and open-ended question types to be relatively accessible. The clickable images and ranking question types presented barriers that made it impossible for assistive technology users to answer the questions. The clickable images required a mouse or direct touch to answer successfully. The ranking question, in this instance, included unlabeled images, so it was impossible to rank them without knowing what the images were. Additionally, the ranking question on mobile created a navigation trap where users could not swipe between answers.
Some issues occurred that were not dependent on the question type, such as inconsistent focus handling and errors not getting focus. Additionally, questions with insufficient color contrast made it difficult for users to read visually.
Recommendations
We recommend:
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Providing alternative text to image-based questions.
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Yale provides instructions for how to add alt-text.
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Do not use the clickable question type.
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Participants should use the desktop version instead of the mobile version due to the navigation traps in the mobile platform.
Additional Information
This summary reflects the state of the platform as of March 3rd, 2022. Please note that some information may have changed since this platform was last tested.
The findings presented in this summary are accurate in the context of the IT environment and configuration at the time of testing at CU Boulder. They may not be accurate in other environments and different versions of the application.
Vendor Accessibility Documentation
Poll Everywhere Accessibility Standards (Includes VPATs for creating and participants)
Please note that the VPATs are untagged PDFs and cannot be read by screen readers.