One of our missions is to make iXplain available to the largest possible audience. Because education is one of the main areas where iXplain is used, accessibility is important to include as many people as possible.

One important accessibility requirement is to be able to set the resolution of the user interface. Windows 10 has the possibility to set the resolution of the overal system. iXplain uses this setting to scale the user interface according to the Windows resolution setting.

Another accessibility feature is the support for color themes. This means that you can set the color theme to light or dark, or that iXplain inherits the color theme set as the default app mode in the Windows color settings. But iXplain also respects the high contrast settings if the users selects a high contrast theme. The related high contrast colors are not only used for the text and buttons, but they are also used in the pencasts even if they have been created without high contrast settings. This means that pencasts do not have to be altered to view them in high contrast colors. Any existing pencast can be viewed in any high contrast color scheme.

Windows 10 has narrator functions in order to read the interface of an app to the user. iXplain supports narrators. This means that any narrator in Windows can be used to read the user interface of iXplain. Setting the focus on an element on the user interface, iXplain will be able to give the narrator usefull information about that element. iXplain has narrator support for all 42 languages in which iXplain is available.

iXplain has extensive keyboard support. Any action in iXplain can be done by using keyboard short-cuts. Some keyboard short-cuts are:

  • Ctrl+Q : Create a quick pencast
  • Ctrl+V : Create a voice-over pencast
  • Ctrl+S : Save a pencast
  • Ctrl+H : Share a pencast
  • Ctrl+X : Export the pencast to an mp4 video file
  • Space bar : Start and stop playback
  • Ctrl+Left, Ctrl+Right: Scrub backward and forward

These are just a few short-cuts, but the tooltips in each user interface element will show the short-cut you can use to invoke that element. Another keyboard feature is that a user can navigate through the user interface by using the Tab key. After each ‘Tab’, the next element will receive focus, which can then be invoked using the Space bar or the short cut displayed in the tooltip.

iXplain meets basic accessibility requirements by supporting color and high contrast themes, narrator and keyboard support. If you are using iXplain and depend on accessibility functions, you might find areas in which the app can be improved. Please let us know if you see possibilities how to make iXplain better by sending us a support email.