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Terena Web Guidance

Recent legislation in the UK, USA, and Europe has made educational institutions responsible for ensuring accessibility for all students, including those with disabilities. Online resources have benefits over traditional materials as they can be adapted more easily for individual needs through technologies like text-to-speech. While non-technical teachers may create less optimized accessible materials, their direct contact with students allows for workarounds. Technical content creators should closely follow accessibility guidelines, but also get feedback from actual disabled users, as guidelines alone do not guarantee usability. Web managers play a key role in ensuring accessible websites and learning platforms through evaluation tools and advice on infrastructure factors.

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39 views

Terena Web Guidance

Recent legislation in the UK, USA, and Europe has made educational institutions responsible for ensuring accessibility for all students, including those with disabilities. Online resources have benefits over traditional materials as they can be adapted more easily for individual needs through technologies like text-to-speech. While non-technical teachers may create less optimized accessible materials, their direct contact with students allows for workarounds. Technical content creators should closely follow accessibility guidelines, but also get feedback from actual disabled users, as guidelines alone do not guarantee usability. Web managers play a key role in ensuring accessible websites and learning platforms through evaluation tools and advice on infrastructure factors.

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Accessibility

Recent legislation in both the UK and the USA has now made educational
institutions legally responsible for ensuring that opportunities for learning are
accessible to all students irrespective of disability or impairment. This
supplements other legislation that already existed for non-educational
organisations. Most European countries have adopted similar legislation:
further details at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy.

Online resources have particular benefits over traditional teaching resources


(books, handouts, slides and overhead transparencies) owing to the flexible
ways information can be displayed or otherwise accessed – for example with
Text to Speech software. In the UK, the TechDis initiative (a JISC funded
advisory service) has been actively promoting the benefits of eResources as
an aid to accessibility. By encouraging front-line teaching practitioners to
produce resources in electronic format a wider repertoire of appropriate
adjustments becomes available for all users.

Whilst an end goal of more widely available eResources is important it does


raise issues regarding the appropriate advice and guidance for content
producers with widely differing technical expertise.

Non-technical content producers


eResources are inherently more adaptable than their paper equivalents so
accessibility is best served by encouraging non-technical teaching staff to
develop online resources. This has implications for accessibility guidelines
given to such staff - technical guidelines which suit web development experts
are unhelpful for non-technical content producers. TechDis therefore produces
different guidance for non-technical audiences. This can be found in the
Accessibility Essentials series (www.techdis.ac.uk/accessibilityessentials) and
in the guidance on Creation of Learning materials
(www.techdis.ac.uk/gettopiccreationlearningmaterials). Non-technical content
producers may create digital materials with sub optimal accessibility but these
materials will represent a substantial increase in accessibility compared to the
original resource (eg photocopied handout). Their direct contact with users
also allows alternative offline accomodations to be made.

Technical content producers


For those involved in producing eLearning content with either a long life span
or a wide reach (eg cross department or cross institution) it is essential to
adhere as closely as possible to the excellent guidelines that exist. However,
when considering active eLearning resources – as opposed to passive text
based content - two themes emerge.
• The art of the possible is not always the art of the sensible. It is
possible to make a complex onscreen interaction (eg assembling a
circuit) accessible to a screen reader but it may not be sensible. The
visual feast that added value to the dyslexic user is an audio
nightmare to a blind user. A tactile alternative may be far easier to
understand.
• Relying on feedback from real disabled users is a better measure of
accessibility than a checkpoint approach used in isolation.

Considering both points together it is clear that a mechanistic approach to


standards can be counter-productive. Unfortunately it is entirely possible to
provide content that ticks all the accessibility checkpoints yet is inappropriate
or unuseable for some disabled users. In these circumstances it would be
more appropriate to signal potential problems and signpost alternative (even
offline) learning experiences.

The TechDis area on eLearning articles is worth exploring in this regard,


especially the section on the accessibility passport.

Web managers
Web managers have a crucial role to play in ensuring the basic infrastructure
of the learning environment (web site, VLE, Intranet) is accessible to as wide
a range of people as possible. The TechDis Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
provides a step by step process by which a website can be evaluated using a
range of online and heuristic methods. In addition to this TechDis recently
worked with AbilityNet to publish Accessibility Advice for Network Managers
and Technicians. This includes case studies and advice on a range of
institutional factors that can make a difference to disabled learners. For those
wanting to know how this approach fits within a wider consideration of web
accessibility standards there is a very helpful article on
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/alt-c-2005/ .
A wide range of other articles on web accessibility can be found at
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=9_4

Other resources that may prove useful to web managers include


• TechDis User Style Sheet Wizard. This is a way visitors to your website
can easily develop their own style sheet to improve the accessibility of
your site – or indeed any other – by loading their own stylesheet into
the browser.
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_6_20051205110543
• TechDis User Preferences Toolbar – this free plug in for Internet
Explorer allows easy zooming, colour and font changes. It does not
maintain the choice of preferences between pages and it does not work
on FireFox browsers but it is useful to help users decide whether they
would benefit from a more fully featured commercial plugin.
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=1_20051905100544

Finding more information


W3C Web Accessibility Initiative:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
Developing WCAG (Web content accessibility) guidelines – Comparison of
WCAG 1.0 checkpoints to WCAG 2.0.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/appendixD.html
Nielson useit.com paper:
http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_evaluation.html
Cast's Bobby web accessibility evaluation tool:
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
TechDis Resources page:
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3
See also Graphics and Multimedia sections for specific accessibility issues.

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