Accessible Content is Better for Everyone
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Blackboard’s User Experience team and Learning Technology Consultant for the Centre for Academic Development (PIL) at Örebro University Many of us don’t think about making content accessible until we come across someone that needs an accommodation. In this session, Katarina Hjärtmyr, Learning Technology Consultant for the Centre for Academic Development (PIL) at Örebro University and Andy Jacobson from Blackboard’s User Experience team will discuss how accessible content makes it easier for everyone to learn. During the session we will review the concepts of universal design and offer tips and tricks for how they can be applied to content in your Blackboard Learn courses.
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Accessible Content is Better for Everyone
- 1. Accessible Content is Better for Everyone
- 2. Katarina Hjärtmyr Learning Technology Consultant Örebro University katarina.hjartmyr@oru.se Katarina Hjärtmyr
- 3. Andy Jacobson Senior Director of Operations Blackboard User Experience andy.jacobson@blackboard.com @uxmoose Andy Jacobson
- 4. What are some of the biggest challenges with accessibility? Here is what educators and students had to say! What Matters Most?
- 5. 0 25 50 Lack of Knowledge Lack of Time Challenges with the LMS Lack of Awareness % of Respondents Barriers to Accessibility
- 6. 0 25 50 Assistive Technology Captioning Videos Using Flash Accessibility of LMS Keyboard Navigation Accessible Powerpoint Learner Challenges % of Respondents Biggest Knowledge Gaps
- 7. 0 25 50 Captioning Time on Tests Alternative Content Completing Work Differentiated Materials Posting to Discussions Reading Attachments % of Respondents Biggest Challenges Facing Students
- 8. Defining Disability Disability: permanent physical, mental or intellectual limitation of a person’s functional capacity that as a consequence of injury or illness existed at birth, has arisen since then or can be expected to arise. Swedish Code of Statutes, Discrimination Act, SFS 2008:567
- 9. Students with some kind of disability in higher education 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Deaf/sign language speaking students 153 141 136 134 141 144 Hard of hearing 203 218 203 193 208 196 Dyslexia 3634 4370 4417 4939 5457 5945 Learning difficulties 955 1427 1694 1943 2588 3070 Mobility impairment 492 606 567 584 555 648 Visual impairment 203 235 288 294 286 280 Other conditions 330 335 486 529 642 780 Total 5970 7332 7791 8616 9877 11063
- 10. Accessibility on the web Web Accessibility Initiative – WAI A web for everyone “Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.“ http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
- 12. What to use? Spell check Alternative keyboards and mouses Use voice or eyes to control your computer
- 14. Screen reader or Text-to-speech JAWS Window-Eyes NVDA Many more… This is NVDA logging in to Blackboard
- 16. How to structure a course
- 17. Word document
- 18. Check accessibility in Word
- 19. Content editor
- 20. Pdf
- 21. PowerPoint Publish in different ways.
- 22. Color, Audio, and Video
- 23. Contrast White or yellow on dark Red and blue Red and green Dark on light Blue and brown
- 24. Images
- 25. Recordings and sound 10-15 minutes Texted videos Transcription
- 26. Deaf or hearing impaired Neurological processing Non-native speakers Noisy environment Literacy and learning to read All about captioning
- 28. 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 How to caption in YouTube
- 29. Universal Design
- 31. Accessible Content Checklist Images have ALT text and/or descriptions Documents are properly structured PDFs are tagged Instructions are clear and succinct Color choices have proper contrast Videos are captioned
Hinweis der Redaktion
- My name is Katarina Hjärtmyr and I work as a learning technology consultant at Örebro University. I work mostly with Blackboard but in our team we also support for instance Kaltura which is a new tool for us in Örebro. I have worked at the University for almost eight years and for the last two at the centre for academic development. When we changed from Blackboard 8 to Blackboard 9, we had contact with one blind student and one blind and deaf student to see if Blackboard was good enough when it came to accessibility. Interesting to see them work and how they found their way around Blackboard. The thing they complained about was the discussion board, but this was a few years ago and the discussion board is much more accessible than it was earlier. We need to get the teachers attention about accessibility. In Örebro we try in different ways. We had what we call an eLunch about ICT where we talked about accessibility and what teachers should think about when they design their courses and material. The eLunch is an hour at lunch-time. One of the universities from the Swedish Blackboard usergroup hosts webinar. Everyone can bring their lunch to their computer or sit with colleagues and just listen. It can be about how to work with tests, courses or how to flip your classroom. The Swedish usergroup meets twice a year and last autumn we also invited faculty. We had breakout-sessions and in one we talked about accessibility. It is necessary to talk a lot about this subject. Not only for the students who have a disability, but for all students and colleagues as well. When students complain about Blackboard they tend to say that it is hard to find material. And if you don’t find material when you have perfect eye vision how would it be if you for instance was blind and needed a screen reader.
- User Experience – we are the team at Blackboard that designs the interactions and the look and feel of Blackboard products.
- We conducted surveys with faculty and students on accessibility.
- 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
- January 1 this year the Swedish law against discrimination was tightened when it comes to disability. If your webpage, your digital information or your facilities isn’t accessible it is discrimination. So how does the law define disability? Disability: permanent physical, mental or intellectual limitation of a person’s functional capacity that as a consequence of injury or illness existed at birth, has arisen since then or can be expected to arise. This is in Sweden but I guess it looks similar in your countries. In Swedish Higher Education we have a specific division that works with these students at each university. At Örebro University it’s called Disability Support. It is the students responsibility to contact the team and bring some kind of documentation of the disability if special support shall be provided at the school.
- This slide shows how many students we have in Sweden with some kind of disability. This is statistics from Stockholm University. If you look at the number of students with dyslexia or learning difficulties you can see that the number of students have increased. These are disabilities which you cannot see but there are many students to consider when you design your course, publish a document or a recording. At Örebro University we have about 440 students with some kind of disability. But that is only those who have contacted our Disability Support, the real figure is probably higher.
- So then, what is accessibility on the web? We have looked at WAI, Web Accessibility Initiative. One of their most important work is to publish guidelines to help us all to create content that is accessible to everyone. The guidelines are part of the international standard for web accessibility. WAI is a part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is an international community with the mission to develop web standards. According to WAI web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the web, a web for everyone and more specifically: Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web You don’t have to be disabled to count for this organisation. Older people also have trouble to navigate on the web, or see since eyesight tends to deteriorate the older you get.
- There are many different kinds of technical help. It can be hardware, software or other technical tools to help control your computer. Spell check, keyboard with braille or a computer that is controlled by your voice. Some kind of help can be the only way a student can take a course – the LMS mustn’t be an obstacle for these students.
- There are special software to magnify your screen, but the easiest way is probably to press Ctrl + to make the text on the screen bigger if you need to. But when you design your course, or the LMS, think of these persons. Look at this image, this is in Blackboard creating an object, where is the Send-button? You can see the scrollbars but they also can be hard to find your way if you have visual impairment.
- The difference between these two are that the screen reader describes the page as well as reads the text. Text-to-speech is what it sounds like, a software which converts text to speech. You mark the text you want to have read and the computer reads the text for you. This is a useful tool for many students, not only those with for instance dyslexia. You can use text to speech both with text from other people but also text of your own. Many students need help with reading and writing, and could be helped if someone reads the text for them. There are a lot of different kinds of screen readers on the market. Here are a few of them. What is important to think about when you design your course is that your students who use screen readers also only use their keyboards to control the computer. I have done a recording of how a screen reader sound when you click on a web page. This is NVDA logging in to Blackboard.
- Or something?
- Even if the LMS is accessible, the teacher or coursebuilder can make the course inaccessible. When I talk to students about Blackboard they often say it is hard to find anything in Blackboard. It is messy and you can’t find what you are looking for. So as a teacher you need to think about how you structure your course. It needs clear headings and use the same way to publish material in the whole course. The information must be transparent and easy to understand. Think about the column from the earlier slide, about the students with learning difficulties – they must also have the same chances to finish the course. At this slide I have tried to create a course in Blackboard with what I think is a poor structure. When I made this presentation, I was looking in a few courses and I found “real examples” of this. I am not surprised that students say it is hard to find material. In this example you have a few different ways to present your material, folders or links in the menu. And where is week 2? Confusing for the students, and you don’t need to have a disability to think that this is hard to understand. Next image is what I think is a better way to structure your course. Easy to understand what you can find and where. You can also describe in the folders a review on what is to be found in each folder and explain which tools to use and how and when. Use the features in Blackboard to make the menu clear. Use the divider and subheader in the menu, and talk to your colleagues how you want to work in your course or programme.
- When you use Word, use the templates when formatting the text. For instance headings, don’t use bold text and larger font size. This is also for the tagging, it will be correct from the start. If you want to insert a list, use the numbers or bullets. And use columns instead of tables if you want to divide the text. For instance our guides to Blackboard used to be in tables to have an image and text to it. Last summer we started making our guides more accessible. We’re not there yet but we’re working on it. Tables are only for data and not for designing pages. For links in your text choose add a hyperlink and the tagging is correct.
- You can also check if your document is accessible for people with disabilities. This works in Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the same way the spell check makes you aware of wrong spelling, you can see if your document is accessible for everyone. When you go to the File-tab and click Check for issues you find the button Check Accessibility. If there is anything you’ve forgotten you will be reminded of it at this check. In the first image you see that I have missed the alt text for an image but if I put the ALT text where it should be I’ll get the green check mark.
- And the same thing goes for the content editor in Blackboard. Use the features in Blackboard, headings, bullets and so on. Don’t just copy paste from word, you will get a lot of extra unnecessary html-code. The text is better when it is unformatted and do the formatting in the content editor. You can also use the keyboard to reach everything in Blackboard. You see the text above the content editor, press tab to enter the content editor and alt + f10 for the toolbar. You need to be inside the content editor if you want to move to the toolbar.
- It is necessary that the PDF is correctly tagged so that the technical help can tell the difference between a heading and ordinary text or an image. If you save your PDF in the wrong way or if it’s not tagged at all the screen reader think it is an image. When I was working on this presentation I tried the screen reader a lot, and one day I received an e-mail from a company in Sweden. The screen reader only said graphic, graphic and it was a few links in the text. As I said earlier, it is not easy to understand how a screen reader works if you haven’t heard it. This is how it can look in an ordinary course at Örebro University. An old text, probably not in the shops anymore and the author has given her permission to publish part of the text in Blackboard. But when you use a scan to copy the page, the screen reader only sees an image. There are ways to unlock many of the PDF:s, not in this example but if it is a Word-document it is possible. This works okay when the text is in English and very bad if it is in Swedish because of some of our Swedish signs. You need to write in word, and create the PDF from there for all tags to be correct. If you do it the right way your PDF is accessible as well. When you open the PDF you can check if your PDF is accessible. Use the tool-button to check accessibility in the document.
- And in PowerPoint as well, use the themes already in the programme. Before your presentation consider providing your audience with handouts, so that everyone can follow your presentation. If you want to publish your PowerPoint in a course, think about publishing it in different ways. Maybe both handouts and your presentation? If you publish your presentation remove all your animations, the screen reader can’t read them correctly.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- So to sum up, if your LMS is accessible and your content is, it will be a success for everyone.