Accessibility for e-Learning Equal access and usability to online learning media can be powerful and life changing.

Access to e-Learning for everyone Provide equal access to all students when they want it – 24/7, regardless of any disabilities.

What is the definition of a disability? A disability is defined as a physical or mental condition that causes functional limitations that substantially limit one or more major life activities, including mobility, communication (seeing, hearing, speaking), and learning. Students with Disabilities at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions (link opens in a new window) URL:

What is accessibility? A disabled person can access and use the material presented as effectively as someone who doesn’t have a disability. The access issue must cause a proportionately greater problem for people with disabilities than it causes people without disabilities in order to be considered an accessibility issue (and covered under the WCAG accessibility guidelines). Accessibility as defined in Section 508 of the U.S. Government Rehabilitation Act. Access issue from Web Content Access Guidelines.

Instructors create the experience of accessibility  Must have a good understanding of how people with disabilities experience online learning resources.  Must realize that accessibility is centered about the user’s experience rather than the document or media itself.

Challenges of visually impaired students  Roughly 75,000 students at colleges and trade schools are visually impaired, according to U.S. Education Department figures.  There is tremendous variability in the level of impairment for this group of students. Basically, there are students who are "legally blind," which is defined as having worse than 20/200 vision after correction, and students who are totally blind.  Some students have diseases that cause their visual acuity to fluctuate from time to time, thus necessitating accommodations during this time period. Blind Students Demand Access (link opens in a new window) Blind Students Demand Access (link opens in a new window) URL: Teaching Visually Impaired (link opens in a new window) URL: Teaching Visually Impaired (link opens in a new window)

Visually impaired students and college learning challenges  College requires enormous amounts of reading, and this is perhaps the single largest barrier for students who are blind or visually impaired.  Barriers to access could deny them equal learning opportunities.  College software needs to work with the programs that visually impaired people depend on to navigate online coursework. Blind Students Demand Access (link opens in a new window) URL: Blind Students Demand Access (link opens in a new window)

Assistive technologies for students who have a visual impairment Most visually impaired students use a combination of accommodations for learning:  books on tape, or Braille  e-text  voice synthesizing computers  optical scanners  screen readers

Challenges for students who have a hearing impairment Due to their diversity, deaf and hard of hearing students may use various combinations of language and speech to communicate in person, often reading lips.  For e-learning success, hearing impaired students should have accessible alternate content where sound or audio is involved.  For all multi-media and video, include text captioning that can be turned on and off by the user.  Multi-media text transcripts should be available for file download or as a link.

e-Learning Platforms Usability Video shows a college student comparing e-Learning platforms (link opens in a new window). Video URL: student comparing e-Learning platforms (link opens in a new window) Video text transcriptVideo text transcript: omparing-elearning-platforms-transcript-LGallup.txt Student comparison of Blackboard and Moodle for usability.

e-Learning Platforms Improvements Blackboard Learn 9.1, SP10  Considerable focus was put on continuing to improve the accessibility and usability of major workflows for users with disabilities.  This release not only resolves some long outstanding issues but also introduces some brand new features that can help improve the experience for both teachers and students overall.

Blackboard improved accessibility and usability  Content Editor: entirely new - formatting controls, such as bold, italics and underline can be accessed with common keyboard shortcuts.  Contrast Issues: all default color schemes are meeting WCAG 2.0 Level AA expectations for color contrast.  My Grades: the "My Grades" tool for students was completely re-designed and significantly simplifies the users ability to find and consume their grades within a single course and across all the courses they are enrolled in.

Blackboard accessibility “challenge” areas  Discussion Board: the complexity of the messages page in the Discussion board still requires significant improvement to work with assistive technology tools.  Virtual Classroom: although the Accessible Chat alternative is provided, this is not considered "equal access" to all users.  Multi-file Upload: the multi-file upload function within that does not interact well with various assistive technology tools.

e-Learning Accessibility Features for Blackboard Course Design Video shows features of accessibility used for course design in Blackboard (link opens in a new window).features of accessibility used for course design in Blackboard (link opens in a new window) Video URL: Video text transcriptVideo text transcript: elearning-platforms-transcript-LGallup.txt

E-Learning Accessibility Presentation  Developed and presented by Lynn Gallup  Software used MS Word, Powerpoint, Adobe Acrobat, Camtasia and Adobe Photoshop  Featured videos located on youtube.com