Hello Instructure Accessibility team and community,
We’re sharing feedback on behalf of faculty at a large public university regarding recent changes to the SpeedGrader rubric interface, particularly as they relate to accessibility, grading accuracy, and repetitive motion.
Multiple instructors are reporting the following issues (screenshots attached):
1. Rubric total score visibility
- The overall rubric score is no longer persistently visible near the bottom of the rubric or adjacent to the Submit Assessment button.
- Instructors must scroll back and forth to verify the total score before submitting.
- For faculty with hand, wrist, or mobility-related conditions, this increases physical strain and makes it harder to verify that no rubric row was accidentally skipped.
- Previously, the layout supported visual confirmation before submission, which helped prevent grading errors.
2. No way to collapse individual rubric criteria
- There does not appear to be a way to collapse or minimize individual rubric rows while grading.
- The only option is to hide or show the entire rubric after grading.
- This increases scrolling and visual clutter during the grading process.
3. “View longer description” opens a blocking modal
- Rubric criteria now require clicking “view longer description,” which opens a modal dialog—even when the description is very short.
- The modal blocks interaction with the rubric and cannot remain open while selecting ratings.
- Instructors report this interrupts grading flow and discourages both faculty and students from reviewing rubric criteria.
- An inline preview (e.g., first line or two with a “read more” option) would be more usable.
4. Related workflow regressions
- URLs in submission comments are no longer clickable, requiring copy/paste actions for document-based workflows.
- Faculty are encountering intermittent “Something went wrong” errors in SpeedGrader that resolve on refresh but add interruption and time.
Accessibility context
Several faculty have explicitly cited hand and wrist conditions where additional scrolling, clicking, and repetitive motion cause pain. The current design removes affordances that previously supported:
- Error prevention
- Efficient grading verification
- Reduced repetitive motion
Questions for the team:
- Are there plans to revisit rubric total placement or make the score persistently visible near submission?
- Is per-criterion collapsing under consideration?
- Has the blocking modal behavior for rubric descriptions been reviewed from an accessibility perspective?
Thank you for taking the time to review this. We’re happy to provide additional context if helpful.
