topic Re: Map Carousel Capabilities? in ArcGIS Hub Questions

Map Carousel Capabilities?

StevenKincaid — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 19:18:49 GMT

Does anyone know if there is away to create a map carousel for various apps and maps similar to an ArcGIS Online organization account landing page on open data? Basically, I want a user to be able to navigate through apps horizontally by hitting a left or right arrow button on an open data page.

Re: Map Carousel Capabilities?

KlaraSchmitt — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 16:16:49 GMT

Hi Steven,

ArcGIS Hub currently does not support a carousel feature out-of-the-box. I have seen some customers who managed to pull it off with CSS, so you might have that as an option. Would you consider a "Show More/Show Less" experience equally as sufficient, if it were available?

We have been hesitant to add carousel functionality as studies (Nielson Normon Group, Notre Dame University) have proven they are not a terribly effective user-experience. In addition, carousels are challenging to make accessible if an organization is trying to achieve ADA and/or Section 508 compliance.

Here are a few more articles on the topic:
The Unbearable Inaccessibility of Slideshows

Hero Images/Carousels | Usability & Web Accessibility
Notre Dame University website metrics
Carousel Usability: Designing an Effective UI for Websites with Content Overload

You may notice that - Notre Dame University metrics aside - most of these articles relate to a poor experience associated with auto-rotating content. I know is not specifically what you are requesting, but I mention this because even with static carousels there can be issues with accessibility. I don't know if you've ever tried to navigate a carousel using a screen-reader, but it can be problematic as the next/previous controls are often absolute-positioned and therefore outside of the natural reading order of the page. Since there are other ways to showcase content that make it more usable and accessible, we typically recommend methods that keep all content visible on the page.

Re: Map Carousel Capabilities?

StevenKincaid — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 16:50:17 GMT

Hi Klara,

Thank you for the response. Yes, a "Show More/Show Less" experience would be equally sufficient. This would help elevate the need to create separate pages on an Open Data Site to include additional maps and apps or even areas that have a lot of text. Is this something that is in production? Is there a timeline when this might be available?

Thanks

Re: Map Carousel Capabilities?

StevenKincaid — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 16:51:28 GMT

Help alleviate the need.......

Re: Map Carousel Capabilities?

KlaraSchmitt — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 16:49:05 GMT

Hi Steven,

We don't currently have the feature in production, but I will add your interest to the feature in our backlog. I tried to find you a CSS-only solution this morning and one that was also accessible, but I'm afraid the one that seemed more viable (JS Fiddle for CSS Show/Hide ) seems to collide some of the functionality being built out around anchor links. The other CSS solutions I looked at involved using span tags, which was unfortunately not semantic enough to make them keyboard accessible, and the ones using checkboxes and radio buttons will not work in our text card due to security reasons. I gather you do not like having separate pages, but if the reason you do not like multiple pages was because linking pages together was difficult, we are making improvements to our header that will be released in the next month that will make it easier to add page links (no more needing to know HTML/CSS to do it.)