sontimalonti 's List: accessibility

• Inclusion not exclusion

    

  Imagine visiting your favourite shop. You find it open for business, but all the doors are locked. How would you feel unable to open those doors even though you know they are open to others? Frustrated, angry, excluded?
• The web has opened up many doors and possibilities for everyone, but this is especially true for people with disabilities. Due to increasing availability and widespread use of access technology, people now enjoy a level of empowerment and independence that previous generations never experienced before.

• Web 2.0 Senior Managers Workshop - Liability and Law a JISC Legal event.  The session focused on the legal implications of using Web 2.0 services (e.g. Facebook & YouTube) in teaching and research. 
• The main problem identified was not the Web 2.0 services themselves but a lack of understanding about how the services worked and the potential issues. 
• institutions should make sure their IT conditions of use for both staff and students encompass Web 2.0 services.
• As the lawyers pointed out really it’s all about informed decisions.  We need to make staff & students aware of the pitfalls and regularly.  Having a policy is fine but making everyone aware of it and understanding the issues is key. This is quite a challenge… ‘Web 2.0 & the Law’ workshops are unlikely to pack them in, so we need to be more subtle.

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• SENDA was an amendment to the Disability Discrimination Act (1995), designed to bring education within the remit of the DDA.
• The legislation applies to all admissions, enrolments and other 'student services' which includes assessment and teaching materials.

• Introduction

   

  Virtual learning environments (VLEs) offer a wide range of new opportunities for learners and for the people who teach them. But like any e-learning tool there are potential accessibility benefits and potential challenges. In the anonymised examples that follow, Cathy Gerrard from the University of Paisley illustrates the accessibility issues – positive and negative - based on real learners and real lecturers but with details adapted to protect identities.
• The lecturer puts the notes up on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) two days before the lecture is due. The notes often contain diagrams and within the notes there are links to other resources such as external websites and articles from electronic journals held in the library.
• The lecturer uses asynchronous discussions boards and now has replaced four face-to-face tutorials during the module, with two face-to-face and two online tutorials.
• Alice has a disability which affects her speech and her eye-hand co-ordination

  • hand and eye coordination
• Having the short video clip on Blackboard is an advantage because rather than just seeing it once if it is shown on a television in the classroom, she can view it as often as she likes through Blackboard

• He is paying quite a lot for printing – educate students on printing.

   

  Using the mouse is sometimes quite painful when his arthritis is bad - having lots of old information on the VLE and having no consistency or uniformity means he has to find information and this causes more use of the mouse than perhaps necessary.

   

  Sometimes he comes in and finds that the lectures offer him nothing more than what is already in the notes.

   

  He doesn’t participate in synchronous tutorials because he can’t keep up with the conversation. The content of the online tests can sometimes give him problems particularly drag and drop questions. Group reports : having an online facility would be extremely useful to him and would avoid unnecessary journeys.

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• Many people understand material much better when it is presented in one format, for example a lab experiment, than when it is presented in another, like an audio presentation.
• Visual Learners
• Visual learners learn through seeing and retain more information when it’s presented in the form of pictures, diagrams, visual presentations, textbooks, handouts and videos. Here are some Web resources that cater to those needs.
• Auditory Learners
• Auditory learners do best in classes where listening is a main concern. These learners prefer verbal lectures and discussions. Auditory learners can get a leg up on their learning with these Web tools

• Kinesthetic Learners

   

  Kinesthetic learners do best when they interact and touch things. They prefer a hands-on approach to learning and enjoy interacting with classroom materials and those around them. These tools can help keep these inquisitive learners busy.

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• Web 2.0 fully responsive web applications that mimic desktop programs – and also allow users to store and share information across the network
• There are a number of accessibility issues with Web 2.0 applications that can cause problems for disabled web users. This is primarily because many of the first generation Web 2.0 tools have been built without much thought for web accessibility. For example a key problem area is Ajax which can causes issues for screen reader users.
• Inaccessible login boxes
• Screen reader users are not alerted when content has changed dynamically without the page refreshing (specifically Ajax)
• • Inaccessible controls on audio or video players that are not compatible with assistive technologies or are reliant on using a mouse or pointing device
  • Users not being alerted to accessibility issues when inputting content
• Ajax is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, it is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications.
• Known Accessibility Problems
• JavaScript turned off. If a user has turned JavaScript off, then calls to get information from the server will not be made.
• Alerting the user that a page has updated.
• For those with sight, this change may well be apparent
• Ajax Accessibility Good Practice

• So what’s important?

   

  Follow the WCAG.  It’s all there.  See Joe Clarke’s talk on Ajax for a nice wrap up of the specific guidelines associated with scripting.

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