Google Forms Accessibility: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:26, 9 June 2021

This page gathers the IT Subcommittee's resources and reviews of the accessibility of Doodle.com. This page will be updated as new information is available or further reviews are conducted.

Accessibility Overview

Our testing focused on creating/editing a Google Form, filling out a Google Form, and accessing Google Form results. We did not test Google Forms on mobile devices or apps. Overall, Google Forms are generally accessible, with some problems; it is difficult to make images accessible, some templates and the default focus indicator have color contrast issues, and there is an increased cognitive load required for creating forms.

Creating a Google Form

In general, filling out a Google Form is accessible if it is set up well. There are missing headers across the various templates, but the active buttons are easy to navigate. All questions are set up as heading level 3, and if you title the survey it will appear as a heading level 1. With some screen readers, you can get stuck in a short paragraph, long paragraph, or the “other” text-entry form elements, but you don’t need to reload the page in order to get out of it.

Filling out a Google Form

In general, filling out a Google Form is accessible if it is set up well. There are missing headers across the various templates, but the active buttons are easy to navigate. With some screen readers, you can get stuck in a short paragraph, long paragraph, or the “other” text-entry form elements, but you don’t need to reload the page in order to get out of it.

Accessing Google Form Results

The most accessible way to access the results is to export them to a Spreadsheet. It can be difficult to view the “Responses” tab with a screen reader. You need to make sure you switch from focus mode to browse mode with NVDA. Navigating the Responses page is also difficult due to the lack of headings and the confusing structure. Graphs are re-created in a badly formatted table that is readable to the screen reader.

General Information

VPAT July 19, 2019
Creating and editing Google Forms with a screen reader
Google’s Accessibility statement
Google Forms support documentation
List of Keyboard Shortcuts

Known Accessibility Issues

Other Resources

Google Forms accessibility by University of Colorado Boulder
Google Forms accessibility by PennState
Google Forms accessibility by University of Minnesota
Creating Accessible Google Forms [.docx] by Perkins

Back to main Digital Accessibility Group page.

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 === Creating a Google Form ===
-In general, creating a Google Form is '''generally accessible''' via keyboard and/or screen reader, though there are some significant cognitive load issues with setting up longer and more complex surveys due to the amount of options you need to navigate through. If you are using a screen reader, you can save a lot of time by using the keyboard shortcuts. Adding description to images is very unintuitive, and the options are confusing. You need to consider the accessibility as well as the layout of the survey before you begin to create it in Google Forms, as much of the accessibility of the final form is dependent on the creator.
+In general, filling out a Google Form is '''accessible if it is set up well.''' There are missing headers across the various templates, but the active buttons are easy to navigate. All questions are set up as heading level 3, and if you title the survey it will appear as a heading level 1. With some screen readers, you can get stuck in a short paragraph, long paragraph, or the “other” text-entry form elements, but you don’t need to reload the page in order to get out of it.
 === Filling out a Google Form ===