Online Courses, Links and the Like

I have run across a few links recently that I wanted to pass on. Some of these have been around for awhile, but just recently came on to my radar screen.

First, a couple of sites with training materials/curriculum for accessible web design:

• Advanced Training Course Overview from James Allen, Rob Sartin and James Craig for the Accessibility Internet Rally. and
• The Curriculum for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 developed by the W3C-WAI.

Then a couple of links pages:

• AccessibleNet.org has a tremendous collection of accessibility resources categorized nicely, each category with it’s own RSS Feed. Be sure to check out the Training and eLearning category.
• Also, a solid collection of links to courseware accessibility materials from the Special Needs Opportunity Windows Project.

George Siemens blog pointed me to this list of 2003 Websites for Learning that I enjoyed. That page points to the Youth and Education Section of the Visionary Design Awards for 2003 recognizing sites designed with accessibility for persons with a visual impairment in mind. This list has also been discussed at length at accessifyforums.com.

Lastly, if you haven’t seen this yet, the W3C-WAI has a great document on the Business Benefits of Accessibility Web Design

Enjoy!

Moodle and Accessibility

You may already be familiar with Moodle, an open source, modularized, social constructionist course management system started by lead developer Martin Dougiamas in 1999.

It looks like the current version (1.1.1) has some basic accessibility features built in, but their road map for the next year is the really good part. By version 2.0, planned for early 2004, they are working towards xhtml transitional compliance. Right now they are planning on using some basic tables, but they will be easily replaced with CSS positioning. Then, version 2.1 is expected to bring basic support for SCORM packages.

Moodle is already a full-featured, very usable CMS with an active developers community and it looks like the next few months are going to bring lots of exciting changes. If any of you are interested in being a part of the conversations that are happening there, you can visit their forums (click login as guest). The developers appear to be very open to suggestions.

Accessible Course Management Systems

I’ve been trying to get my finger on the pulse of what is happening with course management systems and have been somewhat overwhelmed. The options out there span the spectrums of open source vs. proprietary, instructor-centric vs. learner-centric and of course from almost completely inaccessible to claims to be accessible to all users. Right now I’m trying to sort through some of those claims to interpret what different developers mean by accessible.

Starting with what I would consider to be the major commercial players, Blackboard has an accessibility page that describes some of their efforts and they have been a partner with WebAIM for a few years. I was able to dig up what appeared to be a token accessibility page on the WebCT website. However, I don’t currently have access to either of those systems to really take them for a test drive so I’d love to hear from any of you who have.

Regarding open source systems, there is a great list at EdTechPost from Scott Leslie. There are a number of projects, primarily developed at universities and then made available to the educational community. One promising system from the University of Toronto is ATutor, “designed with accessibility in mind.” I’ve just set up and version 1.3 (which has adopted the IMS Content Packaging Instructions) and will be playing with it over the next couple of weeks- I’ll be sure to report what I find out.

If you’re looking for a good place to start in finding out what some of your options are, EduTools is a great place to start. They have a number of reviews (including a brief blurb on “Accessibility Compliance”) and allow you to compare the products that you are interested in, including a group of what they consider “Accessibility Conforming Products”.

Any of you have an experience with a CMS that has (or hasn’t) worked for your needs?

Accessibility, the Good News

The general awareness of online accessibility issues has come along way in the past decade- from the isolated protests of a small group of zealots to an almost essential aspect of good web design. Why the change? It wasn’t the legal requirements of ADA or Section 508, nor the wealth of resources on the topic spewed forth by a variety of organizations. No doubt these voices have been influential, but accessibility is where it is today primarily because of:

1. Evolving standards and technologies that require a return to the separation of content from presentation and
2. An explosion of consumer devices with the same requirements for information access as many assistive technologies

While a few developers were able to see the advantages to making their content accessible to everyone early on, the majority will only to do so under financial, technology and peer pressure. Already, there are many leaders in the web design community who are championing the benefits of designing content that is accessible to everyone.

Will these pressures eventually solve all access problems? No, but they have us headed in the right direction faster than ever before, and that is good news for accessibility.

IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications

This set of guidelines is a collaboration between the IMS Global Learning Consortium and Project SALT at WGBH’s NCAM. The guidelines outline the responsibilities of everyone involved in the development and utilization of accessible online content, from creators of authoring environments to students.

The white paper presents guidelines for authoring (using XML, CSS and SVG), multimedia and almost any technology used in an online course (whiteboard, document repositories, discussion board…). There is also a helpful appendix with links to helpful sites on legal issues in regards to accesible distance education for a number of countries.

The Full Table of Contents is useful for navigating to specific parts of the document.

Should Online Course Design Meet Accessibility Standards? (Article)

Let’s start with this:

As consumers, we would not tolerate a different size and thickness CD for every recording label that required a physically different CD player to pay it, so why would we tolerate the equivalent in our courseware?

This article on the accessibility of online learning materials written by Peter Paolucci for the International Forum of Educational Technology & Society makes a strong case for consumers to demand better adherence to open standards. He states:

…vendor-created dependency on its own proprietary platform will inevitably interfere with institutional and designer freedom to migrate to other platforms that are more compliant or less expensive to adopt.

The conflict between the interests of vendors to use proprietary standards versus the adoption of open standards has thus far been won by the vendors because the educational community has been a complacent consumer. The fact that the current state of affairs excludes learners from inaccessible content baffles me- I’ve wondered to myself, “Do people just not understand?!” I then realize they don’t. Hopefully as people and institutions better understand the issues we’ll start to see real changes happen.

This article was a discussion starter for the IFETS listserv, the discussion is formally over, but you can read the archives here

Accessibility in Distance Education (ADE) website

If you haven’t come across this website yet, it’s a great place to start, Accessibility in Distance Education from the University of Maryland University College.
From their homepage:

The Accessibility in Distance Education (ADE) Web site focuses on helping faculty develop accessible online learning materials for people with disabilities. It is divided into five major sections, targeting common accessibility questions.

The five major categories that they mention are What is Accessibility, Legal Issues, Understanding Disabilities, How-To and Best Practices.
While there are many great resources specific to distance education here, much of the site addresses accessibility issues in general.

Introducing… Curb Cut

It took me awhile to decide if I really wanted to started a blog. In the past year I’ve seen many become completely useless and wanted to make sure I was ready to jump in with both feet. Two things helped me to decide: 1) this will help me to more systematically review and archive resources that I come across and 2) as far as I know, there isn’t anyone else who has specifically tackled accessible distance education in the blogosphere. So if you’re here, hopefully you can find something useful.

Why Curb Cut Learning? You have likely heard of the curb cut principle- the idea that while curb cuts were originally intended for persons who use wheelchairs they are also convenient for a number of other sidewalk uses such as strollers, bicycles, grocery carts, and luggage. While you can always go back and retrofit your instruction so that it is universally accessible, it is usually easier to do so from the get go.

Thanks for stopping by,
Christopher