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Alan Foley, UW System Ken Petri, Ohio State Mark Felix, University of Arizona Improved Access to Learning for All: A Consortia's Approach to LMS Accessibility

How Accessible are Learning Management Systems and Why Should We Care?

How accessible is our LMS, D2L… D2L claims 508 compliance and WCAG Level 1 accessibility, D2L is working on making their product more accessible and usable; however, Any LMS is only as accessible as the content that goes in it.

Why Accessibility? Content design improves for all users Interface usability improves for all users Underlying page code is more portable, semantically rich (ie minable), and lighter It’s a policy and [probably] the law As Steve Krug says, “It’s the right thing to do”

Four Main Categories of Disability Accommodation Visual (blindness, low-vision, color-blindness) Motor (traumatic injuries, congenital disorders and diseases) Auditory (full or partial hearing loss) Cognitive (attention deficits, reading, linguistic or verbal comprehension deficits, memory deficits, problem-solving deficits, math or graphic comprehension deficits)

Example - Visual Impairment

Example - Motor Impairment Dean of a department has developed Multiple Sclerosis and is unable to use the mouse She navigates the web with the keyboard

Example - Auditory Impairment A student researching famous speeches in American history Student locates site with only audio clips of many speeches

Example - Cognitive Disability Professor who struggles with reading comprehension comprehends much better through listening Professor listens to websites through a screen reader like Kurzweil

Accessibility is a Process Accessibility can’t be learned in a day… Training should extend over a long period… Leaving accessibility to the end is NEVER a workable strategy. Accessibility is a design parameter, not a feature request.

“Problems” with the LMS Fixed-size and dense, often frames-based layouts Complex and uneven, sometimes “non-valid” coding that complicates screen reader and keyboard accessibility The all-in-one concept: a fully integrated environment linking together various resources Content production by faculty and staff who don’t always understand general rules of accessibility and usability Feature “creep” and heavy use of solely mouse- driven interactivity

Example - Inflexible layouts Use of fixed font sizes (normal view)

Example - Inflexible layouts (continued) Double-sized text in Firefox

Example - An LMS in a screen reader JAWS reading “course content” page

Example - Navigating with a screen reader with a list of links using “skip navigation” via “headings” via “frames”

Example - Integrating “plugins” in a browser-based LMS PowerPoint in the browser (typically not read, inaccessible) PowerPoint exported to HTML via the Accessible Web Publishing Wizard

Example - Other forms of access (Literacy and Reading Software) Students with attention disorders and reading or comprehension disabilities are by far the largest group of learners with disabilities.

Developers, users, and disability: common ground? Developers want control of interface and read that as: Fixed sizes and heavily modular designs and structures that aid component-based development practices Most non-disabled learners want control of interface and read that as: Interactivity that often entails things such as drag-and-drop, heavily interactive “widgets,” asynchronous updates of page data, and deeply nested, dynamic menu systems, tree-views, and the like Learners with disabilities want control of interface and read that as: Flexible designs, clear, structured, semantic, and valid markup, and well-organized and “chunked” content

Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility (iCITA) The interest groups work together with software vendors and their development and QA teams to illustrate accessibility problems. Issues identified by our groups educate vendors to understand the problems and provide alternative solutions. Everyone, including the users with disabilities, can benefit from the changes.

Existing Groups WebCT (most successful to date) D2L Blackboard Moodle Sakai Library – Ebsco Library – CARLI Uportal WebMail Wiki Administrative Resources

D2L Is Our Interest Group How are we collaborating Discuss known problems and possible solutions Test new software versions to find new issues Design, conduct and analyze usability testing Test new assistive technologies and software Conferences Publications Share experiences and sources of information Everyone is affected by Accessibility Issues and everyone has a part to play in solving them

Needs work Each organization that enters into a partnership or works collaborative with others will fill a need and if there are enough organizations involved then the problem can be solved. The higher the multiplexitiy of ties between participating organizations the stronger the network Milward, Brinton, Provan, Keith. A Manager’s Guide to Choosing and Using Collaborative Networks. Washington D.C.: IBM Center for The Business of Government, 2006.

When and Why You Should Collaborate Make sure the purpose of the collaboration is clear. Participating in a network should yield a result that was otherwise unattainable. Initially keep your involvement shallow until an opportunity arises and goals line up. Keep in mind the benefits may not be obvious (relationships, experiences) Collaborative goals should be the same goals of both the organization and the employee. Huxham, Chris, Vangen, Siv. “Doing Things Collaboratively: Realizing the Advantage or Succumbing to Inertia?” Organizational Dynamics Vol.33 No

Five Attributes of an Effective Network 1. Nodes (participants) link together because of common attributes, goals, or governance 2. Diversity of nodes and clusters 3. Several paths between any two nodes 4. the average path length is short 5. some nodes are more prominent than others Krebs, Valdis, Holley, June. Building Sustainable Communities Through Social Network Development.” The Nonprofit Quarterly Spring

Questions… Alan Foley, UW System Ken Petri, Ohio State Mark Felix, University of Arizona