Accessibility in Online Distance Education Courses
A while back I ranted about Google’s CAPTCHA human detection implementation, and how it is practically impossible sometimes to sign up for a Google Account. But the moment of truth arrived when I listened to the accessibility recording of the CAPTCHA. In case you forgot, I can summarize it with one word — psychotropic. (Usual disclaimers against drug use apply. Seriously, kids, don’t do drugs.)
So, this experience made me start thinking. I’ve done my fair share of web development. So, it’s not like I was completely unfamiliar with accessibility issues. I know that images need to have alternate text, I know that it’s good practice to put a “Skip to the Content” link at the top of the page to skip over navigational links, etc., etc. However, I didn’t really begin to understand what it was all about until finally having an experience on the web were I was prevented from doing something I wanted to do because my senses were unable to decode the information being presented to me.
This was an entirely new experience for me, and it helped me begin to truly appreciate just how frustrating it is for people who have certain disabilities to try to use the internet.
Since I am in a course this semester about online / blended /distance learning, I naturally had several questions after this experience:
- How many people with disabilities take online courses?
- How many people with disabilities are not taking online courses because experience has shown that the course material is likely to be, at times, completely inaccessible to them?
- In terms of content format and delivery, what are the most likely accessibility offenses to be made against people with disabilities taking an online course?
- During online course design, what specific things should we be aware of to make our online courses accessible to everyone?
While searching around on the internet, I found a great little article that gave a nice summary of the legal issues (in the United States) and the technological issues surrounding accessibility in online courses. (Providing Access to Students With Disabilities in Online Distance Education: Legal and Technical Concerns for Higher Education, by Curtis D. Edmonds of Georgia Institute for Technology) While it didn’t answer questions 1 and 2 above, it gave me some things to think about for questions 3 and 4.
Legal Issues
I don’t want to spend too much time on the legal issues. There are some cases where, for example, institutions receive federal funding and must not, therefore, discriminate against anyone with disabilities. But for the most part, based on what I can gather from this article, it seems that the majority of accessibility law in the United States does not explicitly mention accessibility of online information.
However, it is not entirely unlikely for this to change in the future, and we as designers would do well to remember that it is always easier to design with accessibility in mind, rather than retrofitting old sites to bring them up to standards.
In any case, we should do this because it is right. That being said, let’s talk briefly about the technological issues behind accessibility in online courses.
Technological Issues
Edmonds refers to two types of technological issues: “first generation” and “second generation” accessibility issues.
First-generation accessibility refers to our standard HTML pages being compliant with accessibility standards. This includes having alternate text for images, making judicious use of frames or other features that will cause problems for a screen reader, and so on. Typically, HTML accessibility issues are easy to overcome.
Second-generation accessibility refers to other, newer formats for media delivery–PowerPoint files, PDFs, Flash animations, etc. These types of technologies are harder to interface with screen readers and other assistive technologies, although attempts are being made to reconcile these differences. (See, for example, WebAIM.)
Edmonds also mentions that content management systems like Blackboard and WebCT present accessibility issues in and of themselves.
And lest I have implied here that only visually impaired persons are affected by these issues, keep in mind that people with aural impairment, photosensitive epilepsy, ADD/ADHD, and any number of other disabilities may have different experiences with your online content than what you expected.
On that final thought, go out and find some resources that will give you a better idea of what to keep in mind to make your online content accessible. Here are a couple to get you started:
AccessELearning.net (from the Edmonds article)
Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines and Techniques (W3C)
Much of my early experience developing e-learning and working with faculty building online courses was as part of a Special Education department, who of course were invested in making sure everything was accesible according to 508 standards, even though our target audience’s “accessibility relevant” population was minuscule, if not completely non-existent.
But we were a federally-funded institution, and had to adhere to the standards. Fine. The right thing to do.
It was encouraging, then, to see the progression of modern web development practices embrace accessibility either as part of universal design.
I’ve taught web development and design to students at UVU for a number of years, and accessibility has been threaded throughout each lesson. And though emphasizing disabilities still resonated with students at some level, they didn’t really buy into what they saw as additional work until we discussed accessibility as a nearly natural by-product of adhering to web standards, achieving elegant markup, and pursuing the ideals of the semantic web.
And while we can have powerful moments trying out a screen reader, or looking at real users with disabilities, I’ve found that many students find just as strong of motivation when they look at themselves. We then discuss accessibility and universal design not as something we do “just” for the benefit of disabled folks, though they certainly are affected, but something we do for all folks regardless of their device or platform.
For instance, we look at the growing field of alternative devices, like mobile phones, smart phones, portable gaming devices (PSP, NDS)–many of which are now equipped with browsers that vary in performance, capability, and interface from one to another (screen size, Javascript, Flash, XML/XSL, bandwidth, touch-screen, numeric keypad, querty keyboard, etc). We find that so many of the same accessibility issues we might drag ourselves to consider for a population that may or may not visit our site are similarly relevant for growing number of mobile browser users, particularly media choice, interaction, visual design, and speed.
All great points about accessibility. I am in two minds in terms of distance education. I am not sure that we need to design all content to be able to meet all needs. It may be more effective to supply specific distance education to special needs students as they are also likely to have specific content needs. (Blind learners are probably not going to learning about visual design for example, and most deaf students are not likely to be doing any vocal performance). That was not meant to be be demeaning in any way, I am just suggesting that there will be audiences with a certain set of content desires and who will have specific needs, so it makes more sense to me to design to the audience rather than trying to make all things to all people.