Teaching and Learning Resource Center

Accessibility & Playing Mediasite Presentations

Have you wondered about Mediasite's accessibility? Mediasite's functionality is available using keyboard shortcuts and screen readers, in particular, via the screen reader interface.

Caution

Some functionality, such as Polls and Question & Answers, cannot be utilized by screen reader users.

Screen reader-specific functionality

Enable the screen reader accessible interface controls by using Ctrl + z

Once in the screen reader accessible interface, you will find a description of the video above the video playback controls. This description includes a list of presenters, a description of the video, the date and time it was posted, and its length in minutes and seconds.

Below the description, button controls allow for playing and pausing the video, skipping back by three seconds, increasing and decreasing the playback speed (without overly distorting the audio), and adjusting the volume.

Below the button controls is a list of slides. Clicking any slide will jump to that moment in the video.

When the video is set to play or pause, the screen reader announces the play state. Likewise, skipping backward in the video or moving around via the chapter button announces the current time position of the video. It is also possible to find the text that describes the current position in the video in hours, minutes, and seconds, by navigating upward from the play/pause button.

If the video presentation has chapters or presentation links (links to information associated with the presentation), these will appear in lists below the slide list.

UX Tip

Putting the screen reader into a pass through mode will allow screen reader users to use the arrow keys to skip back and forward though the video at 3 second increments.

Using keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts below can help users more easily navigate a video.

Primary shortcuts

  • Space bar = toggle play/pause
  • left/right arrow keys = "scrub"/skip by 3 seconds back/forth in the video
  • Ctrl + left/right arrow keys = skip back and forth between slides
  • Shift + c = toggle captions open/close
  • m = mute audio
  • Ctrl + up/down arrow keys = increase/decrease volume
  • up/down arrow keys = increase or decrease the video playback speed (without distorting the video's audio)
  • f = open the caption/slide text search function
UX Tip

Note that it is not possible to select a returned result solely via the keyboard. Users must use the mouse for that operation.

Additional shortcuts

  • c = view chapters, if available
  • l = view links, if available
  • p = view polls, if available
  • a = ask a question, if enabled
  • s = toggle slide show/slide list, if available
  • Shift + s = toggle slide image and slide text, if available
     

For a more comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts, see Mediasite's article, My Mediasite shortcut keys.