Get help

• Contact the DoIT Help Desk for general assistance or to report an accessibility or usability barrier with Qualtrics.

Additional information

• Additional service details are available on the Qualtrics Service page.

• UW-Madison maintains a Qualtrics KnowledgeBase, for troubleshooting specific problems or learning more about the tool.

• Documentation on the most recent developments in accessibility at Qualtrics is available on the Qualtrics Survey Accessibility page.

Accessibility and usability barriers 

The following information is provided to help people with disabilities know what potential barriers may exist in Qualtrics.

People who are blind or low vision and navigating via screen reader may have difficulty

As part of our university theme, all surveys have a UW Madison logo at the top of the page with the generic alt text, “logo,” creating a possibly confusing experience for a user who is navigating to the page being read via screen reader. A person creating a survey can add alt text to any images used in questions. Survey questions with images must have alternative text in order for screen reader users to answer.

Clearly labeled elements and detailed instructions are strongly recommended for all interactive survey elements. Many question types require custom keyboard interactions such as selecting elements to reveal additional actions. End users would depend on clear, descriptive labels and instructions to explain how to accomplish the task. The elements most impacted by custom keyboard navigation are: 

• Net Prompter Score

• Pick/Group/Rank elements, 

• Rank Order

• Side-by-Side

• Sliders

Additional elements are standard interactions, but require a heavy cognitive load for end users, particularly screen reader users who must remember labels and instructions while answering questions. Descriptive labels will be most vital for elements like Constant Sum, Matrix, and Side-by-Side question types.

Magnification barriers may create difficulty for people with low vision

As a person creating a survey, many pages have elements that crash into each other when magnified, or require horizontal scrolling. Some features become completely unusable at 250% magnification.

People navigating via keyboard may have difficulty discovering custom keyboard interactions

Some elements rely on custom keyboard interactions to complete tasks. For example, selecting elements in the Rank or Pick, Group, and Rank question types reveals buttons for reordering within lists that can be dragged and dropped with a cursor. The following images demonstrate how selecting an item from a list in a Rank question type reveals additional controls for rearranging the list items.