Accessibility Matters - Andy Jacobson, Senior Director, Blackboard User Experience. ANZTLC15
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This document discusses accessibility in online learning. It begins by defining disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act as including physical, mental, or sensory impairments that limit major life activities. It then outlines common disability types like sensory, motor, and cognitive and notes that 60-80% of students with disabilities do not disclose their disability. The document highlights challenges to accessibility like lack of knowledge, time, and awareness. It provides checklists for creating accessible content and captions videos. The goal is universal design and success for all students.
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Accessibility Matters - Andy Jacobson, Senior Director, Blackboard User Experience. ANZTLC15
- 2. Dave Rathbun Dave Rathbun Instructional Technologist Center for Excellence in eLearning dave.rathbun@uc.edu @daverathbun
- 3. Andy Jacobson Andy Jacobson Senior Director Blackboard User Experience andy.jacobson@blackboard.com @uxmoose
- 4. Where do you start? People ContentTools
- 5. The term “disability” means…a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. [M]ajor life activities include…caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating, and working. American with Disabilities Act 42 U.S. Code § 12102 Emphasis added Defining Disability
- 6. Sensory Any disability that affects a person's senses. Primarily for the web we would be concerned with those people affected by blindness or deafness Understand Disability Types Motor A disability that affects a person's ability to move parts of their body. The way this equates to the web is usually a difficulty in using a standard mouse or keyboard. Cognitive Any form of cognitive disability will affect a person's mental capability; this would include a learning disorder or dyslexia. This really is the most difficult group to cater for as the degree and type of disability can be far ranging.
- 7. Undergraduate students11% Graduate students9% Students Reporting Disabilities Source: General Accountability Office
- 8. of students with disabilities choose not to disclose for any number of reasons… often to forge an identity separate from their disability 60-80 % You Probably Don’t Know… Source: General Accountability Office
- 10. Accessible applications allow ALL users to complete the same tasks simply and efficiently. Accessible Applications
- 11. Unmatched Accessibility First LMS to receive NVA Certification from the National Federation of the Blind. (Aug 2010) First and only LMS to deliver third-party verified conformance with W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level-AA. (Dec 2012) First and only LMS to be awarded Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award for “ground-breaking work in accessibility.” (Jul 2010) ✓
- 12. LMS applications are: Complex Interactive Full of both static & dynamic content LMS Accessibility
- 13. Content Editor
- 14. Video Everywhere
- 15. Discussions
- 16. Quick Links
- 19. What are some of the biggest challenges with accessibility? What matters most? Here is what educators and students had to say!
- 20. Barriers to Accessibility 0 25 50 Lack of Knowledge Lack of Time Challenges with the LMS Lack of Awareness % of Respondents
- 21. Biggest Knowledge Gaps 0 25 50 Assistive Technology Captioning Videos Using Flash Accessibility of LMS Keyboard Navigation Accessible Powerpoint Learner Challenges % of Respondents
- 22. Biggest Challenge Areas - Students 0 25 50 Captioning Time on Tests Alternative Content Completing Work Differentiated… Posting to Discussions Reading Attachments % of Respondents
- 23. Accessible Content Checklist Images have ALT text and/or descriptions Word documents are properly structured PDFs are tagged Instructions are clear and succinct Color choices have proper contrast Videos are captioned
- 24. Images have alt text <img alt=“MS Word styles dialog" class="rwrap internal" src="https://help.blackboard.com/@api/deki/files/67109/word -styles.png" style="float:right;padding-left:25px;" />
- 25. Images have alt text
- 26. Documents are properly structured <thead> <tr> <th>Column Header 1</th> <th>Column Header 2</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>table data in column 1</td> <td>table data in column 2</td> </tr> </tbody>
- 27. Color Contrast • Use a consistent color scheme. • Choose a light shade for the background color • Use color discreetly and use strong color sparingly. • Choose different colors for each of the three link statuses: visited, active, and static. • Avoid placing red and green, and blue and brown together. • Do not rely on color alone to relay key information.
- 28. All About Captioning Deaf or hearing impaired Neurological processing Non-native speakers Noisy environment Literacy and learning to read
- 30. How to Caption in YouTube Storyboard Create your video Upload to YouTube Wait 2-6 hours Log back in and select Video Manager Click Edit and select Captions Click Automatic Captions
- 31. How to Caption in YouTube
- 32. Resources Accessibility at UC uc.edu/accessibility Blackboard’s free Universal Design Course accessible.coursesites.com Web Accessibility in Mind webaim.org WAVE tool for evaluating accessibility wave.webaim.org Blackboard Help https://en- us.help.blackboard.com/accessibility Information, Demos and Resources blackboard.com/accessibility
Editor's Notes
- Also thank Chris Edwards, Assistant VP of eLearning Technology Good partnership between Blackboard and University of Cincinnati. The contents of this presentation include content from both organizations. Dave has a great handle on the value of accessibility and universal design.
- User Experience – we are the team at Blackboard that designs the interactions and the look and feel of Blackboard products.
- We always start with people. UX team does a lot of ethnographic research where we interview and observe teachers and students. Found a pattern in how many departments act. Let me know if this example resonates with you. Talking with a professor from a business school in DC. Asked about comfort with technology and how people in the department learn. Heard about a colleague, Bill, who was an extreme. Didn’t like putting part of his course online. Didn’t want to learn how to do anything new. Barely used email. On the other extreme was Jill. Jill thought of herself as an expert. Spent a lot of time reading about online learning, trying new things. Jill went to trainings and prided herself on her knowledge. We found that the rest of the department was on a spectrum between these extremes. What we found when we mapped the communication in the department is that when people had questions about using Blackboard or online learning, they asked Jill. Jill would either answer, research it, or ask an instructional designer from the school and then answer the question. How many of you think you are closer to Jill than to Bill? That’s about what I thought. It is the Jill’s that come to events like this and disseminate information throughout their department. You are the champions for innovation in teaching. My goal today is to give you the things that you need to be champions for accessibility and universal design. I want you to leave here with the confidence that making your content accessible will help all students, and I want to give you tools that you can use to make your content accessible quickly and easily. The measure of success for our time together is: are you able to put some of what you learn here into action right away, and can you spread the knowledge.
- Who are people with disabilities? It is interesting, in the software field, we focus most of our efforts are solving problems for people with easily apparent impairments. We build software to work with screen readers for people that are blind and make sure that interactions can be driven by a keyboard for people with mobility impairments. There is an obvious point to be made here. If the definition of disability includes impairments with things like learning and thinking, there are disabilities that are not readily obvious. What isn’t obvious is that the things that we do to design software for blind users and people with mobility issues help all users! This is the key tenet of universal design – designing anything, content, software, a building to make it accessible for people with disabilities makes for better experiences for everyone. The building I work in has doors with buttons that, when activated, automatically open. I am sure you have seen buildings like that– people use those buttons all the time! I see people carrying coffee, an umbrella, a laptop bag and they hit that button with their hip and breeze on through. I see it everyday. I have worked in the building for 6 years and I have never seen a person in a wheelchair use the button to go through the door. We have a perception that the number of people with disabilities is small. We think that accommodations are nice things to do. I want you to leave her knowing that they are necessary things and they help everyone.
- There is a lot of room on the spectrum for a variety of impairments with varying degree of impact. Screen magnifiers vs. screen readers Quadriplegic versus arthritis
- I want you to think about the last big lecture you taught or attended. How many people in the lecture were blind? 1 or 2 if any? How many were in a wheelchair? 1 or 2, if any? Was there a deaf interpreter? Probably not. Interesting fact – sign language is considered a language and the native language for the deaf. For a deaf person, reading a transcription is like reading a translation. The number of people with obvious disabilities is small. The number of students in your classroom with a disability is around 1 in 10.
- You don’t know who these students are. There is a myth that you may need to tackle when you take this back and talk to your departments. There is this idea that some people exaggerate some conditions to get special treatment. In professional bicycle racing, some absurd number of the athletes have an asthma diagnosis in their medical file so that they can take albuterol. Albuterol opens lung passages and helps increase oxygen flow. People hear stories of extreme situations like this and project them into other areas. In education, steps are taken to make sure that students don’t take advantage of accommodations that are appropriate for people with certain conditions. I have talked to teachers who have valid concerns in this regard, but I would argue that they are focusing their energies in the wrong place. While they are monitoring guidelines for providing accommodations to make sure no one is trying to gain an advantage, there are far more students that are managing a disability without any attention. It seems to make sense to spend more time ensuring good learning outcomes for those students than worry about someone taking advantage.
- I want to spend some time sharing with you what Bb is doing about accessibility. It is our responsibility to build software interactions that work for everyone. I think there is more that Bb can do in the way of accessibility, but we have a commitment to not only the legal standards that are out there, but we have a commitment to usability as well. This means that we are not just trying to check boxes, but to use the principles of universal design to make a better product for everyone.
- When applications are accessible everyone is successful. Learning management systems should be simple, efficient and usable for all users. Building an accessible learning management system means thinking about this from the perspective of all clients. I have a personal goal related to this. I have a colleague, Sam, that works at our accessibility partner, SSB Bart Group. Sam tests our software and if I hear of a teacher or student having a problem, I get Sam on the phone to help me out. Same is blind, so while we can test our code in a screen reader, we have never relied on a screen reader and we need that perspective. Sam likes to tell the story of how he felt when he went to buy his iPhone. It was a huge pleasure for him because it was the first serious technology purchase that he was able to make off the shelf. Walk in, buy the phone, start using it, and it works for him. That’s my goal for Blackboard.
- Blackboard has received several awards over the years for the accessibility of our software. Probably the most meaningful recognition that that our accessibility partner uses our software. They use Blackboard Collaborate for Web meetings because it is the most accessible Web conferencing tool on the market. We build it for education, but the accessibility of it makes it the best tool for them.
- Learning Management Systems are complex applications, The Blackboard LMS is no different. It’s a very interactive environment for teachers and students. When working with complex applications like these users have to deal with vast amount of static and dynamic information Most applications in the market are not designed with accessibility in mind. Only Universally Designed applications can be utilized effectively by users with disabilities.
- Image of the “usable content editor” with a focus on the help text that appears above it stating “Press Tab to enter the content editor. For the toolbar, press ALT+F10 (PC) or ALT+FN+F10 (Mac).” The Blackboard content editor includes keyboard controls that work.
- With the inclusion of the Video Everywhere features you can record yourself giving your lecture for students who can lip read. You can allow your sign language interpreters to record the ASL translation of your audio material. For people who sign, this is delivering the content in their primary language. A transcription is a translation. Students can even record signed conversations to be posted to blogs and discussions.
- Image of the new reading view of Discussions. Previously, too much context switching couldn't see everything in one flow. No simple keyboard navigation. Difficult to read all the messages in a thread. Flattened experience, put all the messages on a single page. Image of the new inline posting experience for discussions. Insert comment right inline. No new page load. This flattening of the interface to reduce clicks and improve usability is a focus for Blackboard in all new user interface designs. I learned how important this was when talking to a professor at Frostburg State University in MD. She has a mobility impairment but had no trouble with the Blackboard interface, for the first hour or so. But soon enough, the number of clicks wore her down and she found that she wasn’t able to finish grading. What I learned is that all of those clicks are additive and over time can cause a problem for people. It got us thinking about the experience as a sum and not individual interactions.
- Image of a tool that is pulling back a list of all page landmarks, the outline of content on the page, plus the list of keyboard shortcuts readily available on this page. Coming Soon. Skip links and keyboard navigation. No browsers support keyboard only navigation outside of a screen reader. Screen readers have these features built in, keyboard users don’t have those benefits, we put them right in the LMS.
- Image of a tool that is pulling back a list of all page landmarks, the outline of content on the page, plus the list of keyboard shortcuts readily available on this page. Coming Soon. You can create exceptions for: Number of attempts. Time of test. Auto submit on or off. Availability of test using start and end dates. Force completion on or off.
- In talking to teachers, one of the more common themes is that teachers are waiting until they have a student that needs an accomodation before worrying about making their content accessible. This approach not only ignores that accessible content is better for all users, it buts a time crunch on the teacher. I interviewed an English professor at a community college in rural VA – she had flipped her classroom and had 12 hours of lectures in video. She then had a student who needed an accomodation. She had to then transcribe those 12 hours of video at the beginning of the semester. She got through it, but transcription can also take 1.5x to 2x the time of the video. Finding 25 hours at the beginning of the semester is a difficult proposition. Better to make the content accessible when creating it.
- We conducted surveys with faculty and students on accessiblity.
- Chart showing barriers to accessiblity as identified by instructors. 40 % - Lack of Knowledge 27 % - Lack of Time 20 % - Challenge with the LMS 18% - Lack of Awareness We are seeing that lack of awareness is becoming less and less of a problem. We just talked about the LMS, so let’s focus on lack of time and lack of knowledge. These two are related. With better knowledge of how to make content accessible, you will get better at it, find efficient ways to do it, and get the results that you need in less time.
- This chart shows the biggest knowledge gaps that teachers self-identified with regards to accessibility 42 % - Assistive Technology 35 % - Captioning Videos 35 % - Using Flash 35 % - Accessibility of the LMS 30 % - Keyboard Navigation 28 % - Accessible Powerpoint 25 % - Learner Challenges
- This Chart shows the biggest challenge areas that students face are 42 % - Captioning 38% - Time on Test 38 % - Alternative Content 28 % - Completing Work 27 % - Differentiated Materials 20 % - Posting to Discussions 8 % - Reading Attachments
- Alt text is an HTML attribute that is added to the code where an image appears. Alt text is meant to identify the image to someone using a screen reader. It also helps everyone if the image link is broken. There is another attribute you can add: LongDesc. Use this for more than 250 characters. The LONGDESC attribute is used to explain the image. At Blackboard, we use a lot of images in our help. When we build the images into our documentation, we make sure that the text can stand on its own.
- If you are using HTML, make sure that you are writing using proper coding standards. The most common problems are headings and tables. How to Make PDF Documents Accessible PDF (portable document format) is an open standard for formatting documents. PDF creates files that look the same when printed as when exchanged electronically. When you share a PDF file, almost everyone can read it using free Adobe Reader® software or the Adobe Reader mobile app. Most PDF files are converted from an application such as Microsoft © Word. Many programs and plug-ins can create PDF files, but very few create tagged PDF files. PDF tags provide a hidden structure and textual representation of the PDF content so that it can be read by a screen reader. PDF tags are similar to HTML tags and Word styles. Adobe Acrobat is the original application for creating PDF documents and converting other documents into PDF. Too many different combinations of authoring software and PDF converters exist to describe each one in this topic. If you are converting a Word file to PDF and you have created an accessible Word file using heading tags, alt text for graphics, and so on, Office 2010 can created tagged PDFs natively. You can also download and install the Adobe add-in, called PDFMaker, to create PDF files from Word. If you are using earlier versions of Office, you must have the add-in to create tagged PDF files. If you are using the Adobe add-in, click Save as Adobe PDF from the File menu. In the PDFMaker dialog box, click Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF from the Settings tab. If you are using the native save, click Save as PDF. Before you save the file, click Options, and then select Document structure tags for accessibility. Adobe Acrobat X and later has an accessibility checker that scans your PDF and alerts you to any problems. The accessibility checker will help you correct any issues. You can also correct table coding using Acrobat's TouchUp Reading Order Table Editor. To learn more about using Adobe Acrobat to create accessible files, visit Adobe.com and search for "accessibility."
- Key Color Considerations Use a consistent color scheme. Use no more than five colors in your palette. Different shades of the same hue with one or two extra colors as accents work well. Choose a light shade for the background color. Dark text against a white background is the most readable combination. If you decide to use a non-white background, select a light color to maximize contrast. Avoid dark pages or loud glaring colors, such as bright red, green, or yellow. These cause eye fatigue and are hard to read. Use color discreetly and use strong color sparingly. For example, black on yellow is a good color combination because the contrast between the colors is strong. But for the entire page? Instead, use the black and yellow combination for drawing attention to a portion of your page, such as an information chart. Choose different colors for each of the three link statuses: visited, active, and static. Keep these consistent throughout the course. Link colors should be dark enough to be easily visible on a white background. Avoid placing red and green, and blue and brown together. These color pairings are hard to tell apart by people with color blindness. Do not rely on color alone to relay key information. Make important text stand out by highlighting it in bold, using an asterisk (*) beside it, or using the emphasis tag. Use the ALT attribute on colored images to help convey information that is color dependent.
- Captioning is important to many different types of learners. I know that I find them incredible valuable when I am watching British TV! I can either turn the volume way up, or turn the captions on. But all kidding aside, captioning video is important for accessibility. Captioning video creates accessible content for the deaf and hearing impaired, but also learning who certain types of neurological processing problems, non-native speakers, people who are struggling with basic literacy, children learning to read and people working in noisy environments.
- It is time consuming and expensive to try and caption content after you have incorporated it into your course. A better strategy is to find content that is already captioned. YouTube – add the filter cc You can also find captioned content on iTunes, Hulu, and other sites.
- You can caption any videos that you “own” – upload to YouTube. Having a storyboard is very important, even if you are making “off-the-cuff” videos. Have an outline and what you are going to say typed out. This will take a little extra time up front, but it will save you time in the long run. With a storyboard, you’ll sound better in your video, and you will make fewer retakes. You’ll also be able to copy and paste your narration into YouTube instead of typing. After you upload a video to YouTube, you’ll need to wait a few hours for the automatic captioning to complete. It’s certainly not perfect, but depending on how clearly your audio track is, it can get you 80-85% there. The most important feature is the automatic time coding so your captions synch to the video. That in and of itself is amazing!
- Just click in the box you want to edit and either type directly or past e text from your storyboard. The first frame in this video is automatically captured as “susan reed has a certain degree of…” It really says “There is a certain degree of…”
- As mentioned earlier, a lot of applications are not built or designed with accessibility in mind. At Blackboard, accessibility is built into all our design and development activities. We continue to work with partners and clients to ensure we understand the impact of any design decision BEFORE we build it. If we encounter accessibility risks and issues with our design we change the design. Accessibility is a critical component in Blackboard’s commitment to providing high quality products and services.