D4.2.1

=E-learning design and development is guided by the need to ensure that learning activities are accessible. =

Evidence
It is estimated that approximately 3/4 of all websites are inaccessible to those with disabilities even when enhancement technologies are employed (Eastwood 2005). What is required is a set of minimum standards for web design and accessibility guidelines.

Institutions must anticipate and not merely respond to the needs of disabled students. Care must be taken 'at the design stage' to ensure equal opportunity to access e-learning resources. This is necessarily an expensive process but with the increase in disabled student enrollments this can also be seen as an opportunity for HE institutions. Provision of access can attract more disabled students.

In a review of institutional compliance with United Kingdom accessibility legislation, Witt and McDermott (2004) comment that rigour and good practice attention focused on learning system environments needs to apply to all sites included in an institutions communication infrastructure: ‘a holistic approach must be taken so that this awareness becomes embedded into an institution’s practice and this in turn becomes embedded into the provision of all electronic media’ (p. 46). Witt and McDermott also comment on the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which is working strategically for the coordination of education and research and the development of guidelines and tools for accessibility. However, they caution that guidelines will not meet every need and recommend developers apply universal design principles to both the environment and the content development. Noting the availability of a wide range of software tools to test, evaluate, and ‘certify’ accessibility, they add that these should be used with caution as audits have shown them to be problematic, with most certification being self-declared. They conclude by cautioning against accessibility becoming a ‘mechanistic or a QA process relying on checklists and evaluation tools which then treat accessibility as an afterthought’ (p55).

Resources
Following a comprehensive review of intersecting online learning and disability literature, Kinash et al (2004). report on the common theme that research and practical applications benefiting disabled learners extends to all learners. They notice that the pedagogical, geographical and technological relations of e-learning offer a serendipitous prospect for an emerging population of new and returning learners with very diverse needs and circumstances. Citing Opitz (2002) they present a range of examples of ways that improving accessibility for some benefits all. For example, text tags that elaborate image information, captions that support audio information, and layout simplification that improves readability (p. 6).

Minimum standards for web design have been set by the World Wide Web (W3C) Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI/, and the Centre for Applied Special Technology’s BOBBY project can be used to test accessibility of web pages. [This has subsequently been acquired by IBM http://www.cast.org/learningtools/Bobby/index.html .]

Ideally there would be a shift from learning technologists focusing on the product of accessibility practices toward describing the process by which these products are developed (Seale 2004). Similarly, now that there are guidelines for designing accessible VLEs, we can move toward describing different ways of using VLEs with a variety of disabled students as well as exploring the pedagogies associated with their use.

Pearson & Koppi (2002) evaluated the accessibility of WebCT materials at the University of New South Wales. They then produced guidelines for designers/developers of WebCT-based courses.

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/alert/

Note that no one set of guidelines seems to cover all criteria that developers need to consider (e.g. the W3C WAI – Kelly et al. 2005).

Seale (2006) gives extensive discussion of disability and e-learning. She argues that what is needed is a lesson in farming not the provision of a meal. Learners and practitioners must be partners in creating accessible e-learning. Attention needs to be paid not just to digital content, but to courseware, library resources, text documents, presentations and multimedia. Non-electronic alternatives may be preferable for some students. There is clearly a tension between the desire to provide a single learning experience accessible to all, and the attempt to produce a range of materials so that all learners may access resources and succeed.

Seale (2006) argues that there is significant knowledge about accessibility in units that support disability student services. Specialists understand the need to assess learners for technological support, how to make appropriate equipment available, how to interface with existing networks, and so on. Academic staff can liaise with such units at the course design stage. This will be far more effective than waiting to respond to student needs.

Kelly et al. (2007) suggest a holistic approach including pedagogical issues, available resources, organisation culture and usability. Their ‘Tangram’ and stakeholder models overlap to mediate good design through more than merely the provision of guidelines. These authors identify seven examples of stakeholder responses to both the drivers and mediators of accessibility. It is also noted that some cautions about the accessibility of ‘institutional repositories’ particularly of PDF documents, will need to be addressed. Overall, Kelly et al. coin the term ‘Accessibility 2.0’ which is characterised by the following attributes: User focus, rich set of stakeholders, sustainability, always beta, flexibility, diversity, blended aggregated solutions, accessibility as a bazaar not a cathedral.