Creating Accessible content with Adobe Captivate 2

Though creating accessible content was possible in Macromedia Captivate also, with the release of Adobe Captivate 2, it has just got better.

In a nutshell, The guidelines of Accessibility (as also in the section 508) state that the content created must be accessible for everyone, even if they are physically challenged (say visibly challenged for instance)

While creating accessible content, the author must put Text equivalents for every visible content, text equvalent for each audio used in the project, make all the text used in the project accessible so that it can be read by the screen reader software like JAWS or Window-eyes and keyboard equivalent for each button used.

Though the rest of things are responsibilty of the content author, Adobe Captivate 2 takes care of making the text accessible to the screen readers. Following is the list of things that Adobe Captivate 2 makes accessible :
1. Project Name and Description (Derived from Project Properties)
2. Slide Accessibility text (Derived from Slide Properties)
3. All the buttons' text labels
4. Labels of the playBack controller
5. Text and button labels of every question slide
6. Text and button lables of the 'Result Slide'
7. Password protection (if any Adobe Captivate SWF file is password protected, the prompt for a password is read by screen readers)
8. Slide Labels (Derived from the Slide Properties)

To enable the accessibility for your project Open the Project Preferences (Project -> Preferences), switch to the preferences tab and check the checkbox titled '508 compliance' (Note that by default this is checked, if you wish that your content should not be accesible, then uncheck this box, However, it is not recommended)

In addition to the above, Adobe Captivate 2 Also enables the content authors to add Closed Captions to audio used in the project. The end-user can read the closed captions by clicking on the 'CC' button on the playBack controller.
Adobe Captivate 2 also makes it very simple to add the closed captions to audio used. A content author can either add the closed caption to a particular audio by using the audio tab in the slide properties OR he/she can also use the Advanced audio dialog to edit the closed captions for every audio used in the project.

The content authors can edit the look and feel of how the closed captions appear when the end-user clicks on the CC button. If you wish to edit the look and feel of the closed captions for your project, do the following:
Open the skin editor (Project -> Skin...) and click on the 'settings' button below the closed captioning checkbox. You can edit various settings such as number of displayed lines of text, foregroung.background colors, etc.

Note that this option of CC button on the playback controller is available only with the new Adobe Captivate 2 style playback controllers, with the old-style BMP playback controllers it is not available.