This article is a practical introduction to accessibility for e-learning projects. It’s designed to help developers, designers and project managers understand the key issues involved and the practical steps that they can take to make their content easier to use, easier to understand and more engaging. Drawing on many years of experience, the article also features the thoughts of the only team to have won the e-Learning Age award for ‘Care Taken to Achieve Inclusivity in an e-Learning Programme’.

1. 27
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
By Angus Main
A rather grand title for an Advance article I hear you say. However, I believe we’re covering a grand topic –
accessibility – which has two things in common with the cries heard in 1789. Firstly, it promises to free our content,
making it accessible to all. Secondly, the term has different meanings to many people and is implemented in various
ways.
The title of the article is where the fancy stuff ends. This article is a practical introduction to accessibility for
e-learning projects. It’s designed to help developers, designers and project managers understand the key issues
involved and the practical steps that they can take to make their content easier to use, easier to understand and more
engaging. Drawing on many years of experience, the article also features the thoughts of the only team to have won
the e-Learning Age award for ‘Care Taken to Achieve Inclusivity in an e-Learning Programme’.
So, why worry about accessibility?
Advance, © Saffron Interactive 2009
Recent research conducted by CSR Europe indicates that as many as 20 per cent of people have a disability that may
interfere with the use of a computer for educational purposes. This means that a huge population could be taking
e-learning courses but not getting the best out of them. It could mean that one in five members of your team take an
e-learning course but don’t really benefit from the experience, risking non-compliance, frustration, anxiety and lost
productivity. Even if you acknowledge and accept this, the truth is that e-learning that’s designed to be accessible
tends to be more effective for everyone. Bottom line, accessibility matters!
1

2. Okay, so what do we actually Does accessibility cost more?
mean by accessibility? This is not our experience. If you think about
accessibility before you start the project and plan how
Most people associate accessibility with meeting the needs
you are going to build accessibility into your design,
of the physically disabled. However, as Jonathan Snook
then the additional costs are minimal. In addition, this
points out in his blog1 this definition misses the point.
investment usually leads to a course that is more usable
Snook see accessibility as being a spectrum: at one end
and more accessible.
we have people with a disability whilst at the other end we
have people who face no obstacles when using a PC. In the
Just like brand guidelines, course duration or the tone
middle, there are the rest of us: those that wear glasses, that
of language, accessibility should be one of the factors
don’t like using the mouse, that have trouble distinguishing
that is considered by instructional and graphic designers
colours, that don’t like looking at the screen for too long, and
from the very beginning. Good designers can still create
so on. Snook therefore sees accessibility as a usability issue.
attractive and exciting content while keeping within
A well designed e-learning course will be accessible and will
accessibility guidelines.
allow a diverse range of people to use it comfortably but will
also create a design that is more effective for every learner.
Everyone benefits from having interactions that are easier to Wouldn’t it be easier to
use, colours that are well thought through and language that
is clear. create a separate version for
people with disabilities?
The standards No. Firstly, creating different versions of courses in this
There are a host of standards for accessibility out there way isn’t inclusive and can cause issues with equivalence.
but the one that Saffron uses is the World Wide Web Secondly, creating more than one version of a course
Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The will increase your workload, impede testing and act as a
W3C provides a set of guidelines and checklists that help you deterrent to testing.
to grade your site from conformance level A to AAA – with
AAA being the most accessible. We find that the AA rating Can you use Flash and still be
provides the level of accessibility that most people need. You
can learn more about these standards by going to
accessible?
With the release of Flash 6, Macromedia provided
http://www.w3.org.
accessibility features to Flash based content. Although
the W3C AAA standards preclude the use of plug-ins, in
One thing to be aware of here is that these guidelines are
practice Flash’s accessibility properties make it possible
not focused on e-learning – they are guidelines for websites.
for the content to communicate fully with accessibility
This means that there will be some items on the checklist
software such as screen readers and magnification tools.
that your e-learning course cannot meet, which is fine as
In fact, the way that Flash is dynamic and vector based
long as you can satisfy the majority of the criteria – aim for
can assist these programs.
accessibility not perfection.
Advance, © Saffron Interactive 2009
You can find out more about Flash accessibility at the
following link:
www.adobe.com/accessibility/examples.html
2 1
http://www.snook.ca

3. Mind your language Ten tips for accessibility
Language is often a barrier to accessibility that many
people forget. Having content that can be read by a screen 1. Images and animations: use the alt attribute (or
reader but that can’t be understood because it’s complex, accProps in Flash) to describe the function of each
full of jargon or out of context does not help the learner visual
with or without a disability. Complex language can also be a
problem when English is not the learner’s first language. 2. Image maps: use the client-side map and text for
hotspots
When building courses, we have found that the guidance
provided by the Plain English Campaign is very useful. You 3. Multimedia: provide captioning and transcripts of
can find out more about this campaign at audio as well as descriptions of any video
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk.
4. Hypertext links: make sure that your explanations
of links make sense when read out of context, for
Horrors to avoid example, avoid ‘click here’
Interactions which require a high level of mouse control or
rely on an awareness of the visual layout of the screen will 5. Page organisation: use headings and lists for variety
always be difficult to make accessible. Avoid describing and ensure that your course is structured consistently,
screen items in relative spatial terms. If your instructions using CSS for layout and style where possible
sound like ‘drag the correct answers to the column on the
left’ or ‘match these questions with the correct responses’ 6. Graphs and charts: summarise where possible or use
then you will have problems. the longdesc attribute
You should also avoid low colour-contrast in graphics and be 7. Scripts, applets and plug-ins: provide alternative
aware of how your course will look to users who are colour content in case active features are inaccessible or
blind. A useful tool to help with this can be found at unsupported
http://www.vischeck.com.
8. Frames: use the noframes element and meaningful
Type that is too small or cannot be resized is a problem titles
for everyone. These days, laptops are getting smaller and
mobile devices are more sophisticated. Learners need to be 9. Tables: make line-by-line reading sensible and
able to resize content but enabling this can be difficult. You summarise
should try to avoid overlapping elements that obscure each
other at larger font settings. However, if increasing the font 10. Check your work: validate all that you write and use
size results in sections of text appearing with scroll bars, this the tools, checklists and guidelines at
can in itself have a detrimental effect on accessibility and http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG
usability. Our approach is to use a suitably large font size
Advance, © Saffron Interactive 2009
as standard throughout courses, and then to make sure that
screens work with magnification tools. Source: W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
3

4. Ongoing testing for
accessibility
When building an e-learning course, your process should
allow for frequent accessibility testing. The earlier you find
an issue, the easier it will be to fix. A number of tools are
available to help you with this process at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html.
However, we have found that accessibility testing needs
human intervention; it can’t be simply driven by the tools.
As the folks at Skills for Access2 say ‘accessible e-learning is
achieved by engagement, not by formula.’ We always use a
diverse pilot group of end users who test various aspects of
the accessibility and the usability of our courses. In the past,
we have found that although our courses are technically
accessible, they’re not very usable and this creates a barrier
to real accessibility. We therefore try to have members
of this group available to our designers and developers
throughout the development process so that we can test for
accessibility all the way through a build.
Finally, it’s useful for developers to have access to tools such
as JAWS3 – a screen reader that is used by many people
who have a visual disability. It works by reading out the text
on each page and, although designing courses to comply
with JAWS and other screen readers takes some thought,
this enhances the usability of courses for everyone.
1789 and all that!
In conclusion, if you are building e-learning content, you
have the opportunity to make it effective for the majority
of the population – don’t pass this chance up, free your
content!
Building accessibility into your e-learning course should
be a matter of best practice. Intelligent design, proactive
Advance, © Saffron Interactive 2009
engagement and the appropriate use of the tools available
will ensure that not only is your content available to a
diverse group of people but that it delivers this content in
the most usable form possible.
2
http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk
3
http://www.freedomscientific.com
4

5. Angus is the Product Manager at Saffron Interactive. He has a background in Flash
development and over five years of experience in object oriented programming,
design and testing. He has planned and implemented the development on a range
of e-learning projects for clients such as Microsoft, BT, O2, and Hilton.
Angus holds a BA in Interactive Multimedia Production and is a Certified Flash
Designer. He has a wide skill set in development technologies and techniques,
including Actionscript 3, JavaScript, XML, PHP, Visual Basic, SQL Server, AICC and
SCORM communication.
He is currently working at the forefront of learning technologies, developing a range
of products that utilise the latest in mobile, video and RIA technology.
Angus can be contacted at angus@saffroninteractive.com
Gray’s Inn House
127 Clerkenwell Road
London
EC1R 5DB
t: 020 7092 8900
f: 020 7242 2757
e: info@saffroninteractive.com
Design by Madhesh Arthanarisamy
ISSN: 1478-7641
© 2009 Saffron Interactive All rights reserved
www.saffroninteractive.com