Recommended Links…

These are some of my favorite reads, If you don’t have one yet, I would highly rec­om­mend pick­ing up a news reader to keep track of every­thing. Accord­ing to my logs, Feed­De­mon (for PC) and Net­NewsWire (for Mac– lite ver­sion for free) are the most pop­u­lar, but there are an abun­dance of options out there. Once you have a reader, you can import sub­scrip­tions to indi­vid­ual rss feeds or grab the OPML file below to import all of the acces­si­bil­ity sites. If you want to learn more about RSS and Syn­di­ca­tion, I would rec­om­mend An Intro­duc­tion to RSS for Edu­ca­tional Design­ers by Stephen Downes or Shar­ing Your Site with RSS by Jason Cook.

If you have any addi­tional sug­ges­tions, please con­tact me, I’ll be adding to the list regularly

Acces­si­bil­ity

Sites with syn­di­ca­tion:
AccessibleNet.org: Train­ing and eLearn­ing Cat­e­gory | RSS 0.91
Accessify.com | RSS 0.92
alt Tags | RSS 2.0
CETIS — Cen­tre for Edu­ca­tional Tech­nol­ogy Inter­op­er­abil­ity Stan­dards | RSS 1.0
Curb Cut Learn­ing | RSS 1.0 | RSS 2.0
InfoDe­sign — Acces­si­bil­ity | RSS 2.0
isolani — Web Acces­si­bil­ity Blog | RSS 1.0 | Atom 0.2 | Atom 0.3
Juicy Stu­dio | RSS 1.0 | RSS 2.0
MCU: Acces­si­ble Web Design | RSS 0.91
Sara Ford’s Weblog | RSS 2.0
Simon Willison’s Weblog | RSS 1.0
Stephen’s Web ~ Edu_RSS ~ Acces­si­bil­ity | RSS 0.90 | RSS 0.91 | RSS 1.0 | RSS 2.0 | Atom 0.2
WATS.ca — Web Acces­si­bil­ity Test­ing and Ser­vices | RSS 0.91
<CF_Pretty> Acces­si­ble Blog | RSS 1.0

Link to an OPML file of the above sites

Sites with­out syn­di­ca­tion (yet)
AnitraPavka.com — Acces­si­ble Usable Design
WebAIM

Dis­tance Education

Autoun­fo­cus | RSS 0.91
Distance-Educator.com’s Daily News | RSS 1.0
elearn­ing­post | RSS 1.0
elearn­space blog | RSS 1.0
Stephen’s Web ~ OLDaily | RSS 0.91

Web Design

A List Apart | RSS 0.91 | RSS 1.0 | RSS 2.0
Jef­frey Zeld­man Presents: The Daily Report | RSS 2.0
714 | RSS 1.0
Web Design Ref­er­ences (com­pre­hen­sive acces­si­bil­ity cat­e­gory) | RSS 1.0

Weblogs with some acces­si­bil­ity content

cook­iecrook: james craig | RSS 0.91
Andy Budd: Blo­gog­ra­phy | RSS 1.0

Acces­si­bil­ity in For­eign Languages

Ein­fach fur Alle (Ger­man) | RSS
CYBERCodeur.net | RSS 2.0

Accessible Web Forms

Behold! a new writer and a new cat­e­gory to write about. Topher was kind enough to intro­duce me below, so I will just jump right in. As a web devel­oper who strives to make accessible/usable web­sites, one of the chal­lenges is mak­ing html forms acces­si­ble. One of my projects last week was to whip up a quick sur­vey for my employer. I’m inter­ested in any feed­back fel­low devel­op­ers might have on the cod­ing tech­niques I’ve imple­mented. In par­tic­u­lar, I’m inter­ested on people’s thoughts on my use of the “field­set” and “leg­end” tags. I am also inter­ested in peo­ples’ thoughts on my check­boxes. I didn’t use “label” tags because I felt that the lay­out was log­i­cal enough to not require it. But I am inter­ested in if peo­ple feel it is bad form to have the actual check­box come before the option that you are check­ing off? Please use the ‘com­ment’ func­tion to give your feed­back, and don’t be shy.

Access E-Learning (Free Training!)

Access E-Learning

From the site:

Access E-Learning (AEL) is a ten-module tuto­r­ial that is a resource for those seek­ing to make their dis­tance edu­ca­tion acces­si­ble for indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties. AEL offers infor­ma­tion on the most com­mon needs in dis­tance edu­ca­tion, and pro­vides instruc­tion in tech­niques that will enhance the usabil­ity of online mate­ri­als for all students.

The tuto­ri­als are being pro­vided as a ser­vice of the Geor­gia Tech Research on Acces­si­ble Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion project (GRADE). The ten mod­ules go over Dis­abil­i­ties, Acces­si­bil­ity Plan­ning, Pow­er­point, Video, Flash, Word, Excel, PDF, HTML and Scripts/Java. Many of the mod­ules even have a lab along with the nec­es­sary files (Win­dows or Mac) that you can down­load to prac­tice what you are learning.

Per­haps even more excit­ing are some of the future activ­i­ties that Project GRADE has planned, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of dis­tance edu­ca­tion acces­si­bil­ity stan­dards and a national lead­er­ship insti­tute on acces­si­bil­ity in dis­tance edu­ca­tion. I’ll be watch­ing this project closely and keep­ing you updated on what they are up to.

Making Online Teaching and Learning Accessible Satellite Event

I’m back among the liv­ing and came across what looks to be an excit­ing event on the Dis­abled Stu­dent Ser­vices in Higher Edu­ca­tion List­serv yes­ter­day. Work­ing with the PBS Adult Learn­ing Ser­vice, the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Uni­ver­sity Col­lege is pro­duc­ing a live tele­cast titled:

Untan­gling the Web: Mak­ing Online Teach­ing and Learn­ing Accessible

From the descrip­tion, the areas that the tele­cast plans to cover are:

• How stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties are nav­i­gat­ing the Web, and how
  inac­ces­si­ble course con­tent impacts the work of fac­ulty and staff
• How to address acces­si­bil­ity prob­lems posed by course­ware, course
  man­age­ment sys­tems, mul­ti­me­dia, and use of audio and video in online
  courses
• What kind of col­lab­o­ra­tive mod­els have been devel­oped to help fac­ulty
  and staff meet the chal­lenge of online accessibility
• How to develop insti­tu­tional coor­di­na­tion poli­cies in your cam­pus or
  organization
• What fac­ulty and staff devel­op­ment pro­grams can do to enhance
  under­stand­ing of dis­abil­ity and technology
• What role good teach­ing plays in improv­ing online accessibility
• How Uni­ver­sal Design and Uni­ver­sal Design for Instruc­tion can inform
  the process of ensur­ing online accessibility

It is still 3 months away, but looks to be an excit­ing event.

On another note, I have recruited Jeff Coburn to share with us some of his acces­si­bil­ity wis­dom on Curb Cut Learn­ing. Jeff is our web spe­cial­ist at the Insti­tute for Com­mu­nity Inclu­sion and he is the guy I go to when I’m stumped with an acces­si­bil­ity ques­tion or am try­ing to fig­ure out a new tech­nol­ogy. Wel­come Jeff.

Accessible Web-based Distance Education: Principles and Best Practices Article

Acces­si­ble Web-based Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion: Prin­ci­ples and Best Practices

I really like this arti­cle from Lau­rie Har­ri­son at the Unver­sity of Toronto because of the empha­sis on Uni­ver­sal Design Prin­ci­ples. While it is a bit dated (it looks like all of the ref­er­ences were pulled in July of 1999), the ideas expressed are solid and pro­vide a good basic overview for some­one new to the ideas of uni­ver­sally designed dis­tance education.

The idea of uni­ver­sal design is vital in pro­mot­ing the develp­ment of acces­si­ble dis­tance edu­ca­tion resources. Unfor­tu­nately, too many devel­op­ers still igno­rantly lump all types of users with dis­abil­i­ties together and then dis­miss their con­tent as being irrel­e­vant to “that pop­u­la­tion.” Idiots. When peo­ple real­ize that stan­dards based markup that sep­a­rates con­tent from pre­sen­ta­tion in acces­si­ble ways ben­e­fits EVERYONE then maybe we’ll see wide­spread change hap­pen­ing. The good news is that it is already hap­pen­ing to some degree and we’ll only see more of it in the next few years.

On a side­note, I’m get­ting my ton­sils out in a cou­ple of hours, so it may be a week or two before I post again. I’ll have plenty of time to think while recov­er­ing (and I’ll be on some pretty heavy painkillers), so maybe I’ll have some inter­est­ing thoughts to share when I come back.