Supporting staff in inclusive online practices Elaine Pearson, Director, ARC Visiting Research Fellow, Tony Koppi, Director, EDTeC University of New South Wales University of Teesside

ARC projects: Accessibility and eLearning in collaboration with EDTeC, UNSW (HEFCE) LMS for students with severe disabilities (ESF) Web accessibility support for small businesses in the digital media sector (ERDF) National and international collaborative research in accessibility and eLearning (HEIF) Mobile and wireless technologies; learning objects and accessibility metadata; interactive and collaborative technology;eAssessment(ESF)

UNSW/University of Teesside Accessibility and eLearning in collaboration with EDTeC, UNSW. Activities include – Analysis of student and staff experience Guidelines for accessible online learning Workshops, seminars, online courses Support website Guidelines for web-developers

Strategies for supporting staff Need to develop empathy for the academic with the disabled student experience: To enable understanding of the problems faced To be aware of the need to make adjustments To motivate a willingness to adopt new practices and develop new skills To persuade them its worth investing time in

Your views What techniques would you use to develop the empathy of staff with the disabled student experience? Say “g’day” to your neighbour and brain storm your ideas for one minute. Feedback.

Techniques Simulations (of effect not of disability): Vision impairment, blindness, physical disability, cognitive impairment Demonstrations: Blind student accessing a LMS Assistive technology: Hands-on experience to understand issues (not to become expert users)

Our approach Empathise with the academic experience to bring about changes in practice: Academics are busy and lack technical skills Need skills in accessibility using familiar tools Support must be timely, appropriate, targeted, expert where necessary Incremental approach – do what you can, change gradually Three elements to initial support: – Understand student experience, hands-on with assistive technology, simple techniques using familiar tools

Tips we recommend Language: keep it clear and simple Colour: avoid using as sole means of transmitting information Format: use inbuilt heading styles e.g. heading1, heading 2 Text: use san serif font with lots of white space and minimum font size 12 Images: use descriptions (alt tags/captions) Navigation: be consistent, ensure hyperlinks describe destination

Reflection Is it ALL or NOTHING? Is it acceptable to have a partially accessible solution? e.g. 30% of a course meets W3C 1,2 and 3, the rest may have inaccessible features. Is that acceptable in the context of busy academics doing what they can to meet the needs of all their students?

Supporting staff in inclusive online practices Useful links ARC website: EDTeC support site: cfm Techdis, UK educational advisory service: WebAim, accessibility support site: Workshop: Designing accessible online courses and resources: Elaine Pearson

Supporting staff in inclusive online practices Dr Elaine Pearson, Director, ARC Visiting Research Fellow, Associate Professor Tony Koppi, Director, EDTeC University of New South Wales University of Teesside