Check Survey Accessibility

Checking Survey Accessibility Overview

Survey Accessibility is important if you have individuals responding to your survey using a screen reader, like JAWS. Another term common to this form of accessibility is 508 Compliance.

Checking Your Survey’s Accessibility

  1. In Edit Survey, click Advanced Options.
  2. Click Check Survey Accessibility.
    A check, similar to the Spell Check feature, will be run on your survey.
  3. If potential problems are found within the survey, you will be notified and given suggestions for how you can change the questions to make them accessible.
  4. Click the individual suggestions in the list, and the system will jump you to the location that needs to be changed.
  5. When done editing, click Done or Recheck.

Accessible and Non-Accessible Question Types

The following question types are accessible:

  • Multiple Choice – all 21 types
  • Matrix – except Bipolar
  • Text Entry – all
  • Side by Side
  • Rank Order except Drag and Drop
  • Constant Sum – except Slider
  • Timing
  • Meta
  • Descriptive Block
  • Drill Down

The following question types are not accessible:

  • Slider
  • Constant Sum – Slider
  • Matrix – Bipolar
  • Rank Order – Drag and Drop
  • Pick, Group, and Rank
  • Heat Map
  • Hot Spot
  • Sliding Scale
  • GAP

Disabling “Allow Non-Accessible Surveys”

Most organizations are set up to allow survey builders to create non-accessible surveys. An Allow Non-Accessible Surveys permission is enabled by default, but you can disable it on the organization, user type, and user levels. When disabled, a symbol is placed next to each survey to designate whether the question is accessible.

  • Green icon: This designates an accessible question (works best with screen reader programs).
  • Red icon: This designates an inaccessible question. A variation of that question type will work better for screen reader programs.

Please contact the Qualtrics administrator at your organization to enable/disable that permission on your account, if needed.