On-Line Teaching – Improving Accessibility

• Introduction
• General / Legal
  • Overview
  • Definition of Disability
  • Myths and Assumptions
  • Disability Legislation
  • Key Understandings
  • Disability Action Plans
  • Disclosure and Privacy
  • Inherent Requirements - Tips
• Communication / Interaction
• Universal Design
  • Inclusive Practice / Universal Design?
  • Tips for Applying Universal Design
• Disability Information
  • Accomodations for Students with Disabilities
  • Aspergers Syndrome
    • General Information
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
  • Hearing Impairment
    • General Information
    • Communication
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
  • Learning Disability
    • General Information
    • Communication
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
  • Medical Disability
    • General Information
    • Communication
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
  • Mobility Impairment
    • General Information
    • Communication
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
  • Psychiatric Disability
    • General Information
    • Communication
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
    • Additional Information
  • Vision Impairment
    • General Information
    • Communication
    • Teaching Strategies
    • Assessment Strategies
• Alternative Assessment
  • Alternative Assessment - General
  • Alternative Assessment Strategies
• Accessible On-line Teaching
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Appendices
  • Making Print Materials more Accessible
  • Accessible Word & PDF documents
  • Working with an interpreter
  • Students in Other Learning Environments
• Acknowledgements

• Guide Home

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Understanding On-Line Accessibility

Provision of on-line teaching content has undoubtedly assisted in improving access to educational material for many students. However, simple provision of on-line learning content may present as a barrier to many others who face technological access challenges because of disability. Technological barriers are those that make it more difficult for a person with a disability to use an application or service than for a person without a disability. It is therefore vital for educators to consider technological accessibility issues when they are designing their on-line learning materials. This section of the Resource aims to increase awareness of the technological access challenges faced by many students with disabilities. Possible solutions to these challenges are proposed which will assist staff to minimize technological barriers in their on-line teaching.

There are many resources available to assist staff in designing for accessibility and useability. A list of some of these resources is provided at the end of this section to assist staff should they wish to pursue specific areas of interest.

Technological Access Challenges and Proposed Solutions

Benefits of accessible design

Removing or minimising technological access barriers helps in ensuring that students with disabilities are not excluded from the learning process. It should also be recognised, however, that it is not only students with disabilities who can benefit from on-line accessibility. Participants who have situational limitations can also benefit. For example, a student with a slow Internet connection or older computer may have trouble running multimedia applications. A student without speakers may not be able to hear audio or video narration. Providing meaningful alternatives benefits all types of students- not just those with disabilities- and improves the quality of online education (http://www.umuc.edu/ade/wia/benefits.html).

Accessible design verification checklist
source: http://www.umuc.edu.ade/wia/benefits.html

The checklist below will assist in verifying whether your content is accessible:

1. Turn off graphics. Make sure that you can understand and navigate the site with only the supplies ALT-text.
2. Turn off style sheets. Make sure your pages are still readable without style sheet formatting.
3. Set the zoom text to its maximum value. Make sure your page layout can accommodate the large text.
4. Resize your browser window. Make sure the layout holds up to different window widths.
5. Navigate using the Tab key. Make sure you cycle through links in a logical order. Verify that the text of your links makes sense when read out of context.
6. Check your pages with monochrome settings. Make sure there is sufficient colour contrast, particularly between text and background.
7. Check your pages with screen reader software. Make sure the page makes sense when read aloud. Disability services will provide access to software upon request.
8. Save your pages as text only from the browser. Make sure your pages make sense when read linearly.
9. Validate and preview your pages (resources listed below)

Note: Navigating on-line content can be time consuming and frustrating for students with disabilities. If, within faculties and schools, on-line content is presented in a consistent format, finding information will be easier and the risk that the student will miss important announcements or changes is reduced. Following the template provided for OLT sites will assist students to avoid the need to search multiple pages to access important information.

Accessibility Solutions

The following information addresses some of the problems that might be experienced by students with specific disabilities.

Mobility Impairments
For some people, mobility impairments affect their ability to move their hands. To access a computer and the Internet, they use alternative keyboards and mice, voice activated software and other input devices to operate navigational tools and access internet-based course materials Some students with mobility impairments do not have the fine motor skills required to select small buttons on the screen.

Vision Impairment

Blindness
Individuals who are blind often use computers equipped with screen reader software and speech synthesizers. With a synthesized voice, this system reads whatever text appears on the computer screen. They may use a browser that only reads text presented on the World Wide Web or they may use a multimedia browser with the graphics-loading feature turned off. This type of system cannot interpret graphics. For example, a speech synthesiser may simply say “image map” at the place where an image map would be displayed to someone using the full features of a multimedia Web browser.

Low vision

Students who are not blind but have limited vision may use special software to enlarge screen images. They view only a small portion of a standard screen page at a time. Consequently, web pages that are cluttered and page layouts that are not consistent from page to page can make navigating web sites and understanding content difficult. People who are colour blind encounter barriers erected by coursework that requires that they be able to distinguish one colour from another to navigate the site or understand the web content.

Colour blindness

Cognitive/Learning Disabilities

Some specific learning/cognitive disabilities impact on the ability to read, write and/or process information.
Some students with these types of disabilities use screen enlargement systems or text to speech systems similar to those used by people with vision impairment to help them read text on a computer screen.
Students with some learning/cognitive disabilities have difficulty understanding web sites when the information is cluttered and the screen layout changes from one page to the next.

Hearing Impairment/Deafness
Most internet resources do not require the ability to hear and are, therefore, accessible to people who are deaf or hearing impaired. However, when web sites include audio output without providing text captioning or transcription, individuals with hearing impairments cannot access the content.

The audio content of videotapes that are not captioned is also inaccessible to individuals who are deaf.

Sources:

Tables copyright © 2005 Web AIM http://webaim.org/techniques/userperspective and reproduced with kind permission.

(Iinformation on Access Challenges and Proposed Solutions is adapted, with permission, from information located at: http://www.aace.org “Distance Learning Universal Design, Universal Access” article by Sheryl Burgstahler and Paul Bohman’s article “Considering the user perspective: a summary of design issues” 2002 located in http://www.webaim.org/techniques/userperspective/?templatetype=3)