Dear Trados Studio community. I have been tasked with supplying accessibility information for disabled students about our translation software tools. Does anyone know what accessibility features are available in Trados Studio or where I might find that information? Does Trados have a voluntary product accessibility statement or section 508 statement?
That's a great question... and I think Daniel Brockmann may be the best person to help answer this one.
Paul Filkin | RWS Group
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Hi Sarah,
(thanks Paul for tagging me here.)
There is no hard and fast answer to this question, since accessibility is a complex topic. Against this background, we don't currently have a VPAT or section 508 statement. Having said that, accessibility is a key area for us to keep looking at. At this point, Studio is based on a mix of technologies. Some of them lend themselves to accessibility better than others. We are slowly but surely moving towards these more recent technologies. A good example is the Project Wizard. We redesigned this wizard for Studio 2019 and whenever we make such a bigger change, we are using more accessible user interface technologies where we can. On the other hand, there are some older components in Studio that don't yet play so well with accessibility, unfortunately. Since Studio is a 'large' product, it is not possible for us to make everything accessible overnight, but we do keep migrating bits and pieces over to newer technologies, which should then in turn help to make Studio more and more accessible over time. Another key accessibility element is keyboard support. Studio has always been fairly good at this, however certain view parts within the software were not keyboard-accessible until recently, where we made some enhancements to Studio 2021.
Another increasingly interesting aspect is apps that can add accessibility features to Studio at least to some extent. One such app is TTS (Text To Speech) which can read out source and target segments and thus help users with difficulties to navigate the Studio editor better. See https://appstore.sdl.com/language/app/sdl-tts/1036/ for more information. On the other hand, there are other areas in the editor that are not yet fully accessible, and while it is possible to use e.g. Dragon for dictation, it's again a complex area with strengths and weaknesses in Studio.
Coming back to my first point - there is no hard and fast answer and it's multi-faceted, but we do try and make Studio more accessible over time.
Thanks, Daniel
Daniel Brockmann
Team Trados @ RWS
Dear Daniel,
Thanks for your comprehensive answer. That will help as I can state that Studio is working towards improving accessibility and mention the areas you cover.
Sarah
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