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Effective Practices in Online Teaching
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It is important for UMUC to serve all its students, regardless of any possible disability. Some may suffer from relatively minor disabilities, such as color blindness, while others may face bigger challenges such deafness or complete blindness. The online classroom can be even more critical to these students than to students without disabilities in terms of providing access to higher education. Many faculty members are aware that UMUC is bound by various laws to provide access to the disabled, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which covers institutions receiving funding from the federal government including most universities. While students who require accomodation are required to notify UMUC's Office of Veteran and Disabled Student Affairs in before they start their course, proactive steps taken by faculty members can help avoid unpleasant surprises and make it easier to re-use exsiting material. We wrote some time ago about the accessbility issues involved with using video in the online classroom, but there are ways that a page can be inaccessible whether or not video or other mulitmedia components are used. While not all faculty are creating their own HTML pages, and those who do might find compliance with the two main web accessbility standards (the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and, in the United States, Section 508) daunting, there are simple steps that can make a big difference. If done in advance, many improvements to accessibility can be made without too much effort, whether creating web pages, using the WebTycho text formatting editor, or simply attaching MS-Word or Adobe Acrobat documents. Color: Say It Another Way, TooIn part I of this series, we talked about avoiding color overload. Indeed, judicious use of color is a key accessibility consideration. According to the Sight & Hearing Association, more than one in 15 men is color blind. It is important to make sure that any information conveyed with color should also be conveyed in some other manner. For instance, imagine how the following assignment posting might appear to a color-blind student:
A simple solution, of course, is to simply group the assignments by whether they are required or recommended and label them as such. Color can still be used for additional emphasis. Another example is one to consider when using visuals either self-created or reproduced from elsewhere. Compare how the following graphs might look to someone with color blindness.
The graph on the right is much clearer (possibly even for those readers without any color blindness). Color blindness is more complex than just seeing the world in shades of gray. These examples are simplifications for purposes of illustration. Color: Keep Things in ContrastEven when color is not the sole form of communicating information, it is still important that there be enough contrast between the text and the background. The following is difficult enough for those without visual impairements and likely impossible for people with some kinds of color blindness: Make sure to submit your assignment before midnight on Sunday, March 12. More detailed information on using color in the context of color blind readers is available in an article entitled Effective Color Contrast by Lighthouse International, an organization which helps the partially sighted or blind remain productive and independent. Although the examples shown here may seem trivial, they highlight problems that are easy to overlook. If you're curious to see how your materials might actually look to people with various kinds of color-blindness, you can use a tool like Vischeck which simulates various kinds of color blindness. Click Here: Use Meaningful LinksIf you are using links in your course material, be it in an HTML document, in an attached MS-Word document, in a PowerPoint file, or what have you, it is often tempting to link just the words "click here". But compare the following (NB: these are non-working links for demonstration purposes only): For an example of dollar-cost averaging, click here. Please see an example of dollar-cost averaging. There are two problems, with this, however. First, readers who are blind often use screen reading software to "read" pages to them, these often work by jumping from link to link. This means that links might be read without the context around them, so when a link reads "click here" it's not at all clear what that link will lead to. The second problem concerns viewers without visual impairments. When they scan the text, the links will stand out, but will be largely meaningless, forcing the reader to stop, scan the words around the link, and then evaluate the link anew. Much more expedient would be to simply link the appropriate text as in the second example. What Am I Saying?: Script It OutIf faculty make use of some kind of narrated audio, whether stand-alone sound or as part of a multimedia or PowerPoint presentation, they are encouraged to consider writing up a script beforehand. Not only does this allow for a tighter, more professional sounding presentation, but it also means that a ready "transcript" is available for posting alongside the audio. The text needn't match what is said verbatim. As long as there is no material difference between the two, this fulfills the goals of accessibility. Incidentally, this transcript is not only useful for the hearing impaired, but can also be appreciated by students who are connecting from areas with unreliable or costly internet connections. This often includes students who are serving in military deployments. Adobe Acrobat Files: From Word with StyleAdobe Acrobat (also called "portable document format" or "PDF") files are superior to MS-Word documents for most purposes in the online classroom. Although it is possible to "tag" these files for higher accessibility, this is more complicated than most faculty members are likely to feel comfortable with. However, when creating PDF files from MS-Word documents, Acrobat will retain the "style" information from the original MS-Word documents which will make the resulting PDF files more accessible. By using styles, assistive devices can better tell whether a piece of text is a header, body text, or a caption for an image, and therefore help the user determine its meaning. More information on using styles in MS-Word is available from the help feature within the software or from Microsoft's Word 2003 Assistance site. More information about the accessbility features now included in Adobe Reader is available from the article Accessbility Features in Adobe Reader 7 available from WebAIM, a website focussing on questions of accessbility and the Web. What Is this Graphic??: The Famous alt AttributeIf you are creating HTML pages by whatever means (including popular editors like Netscape Composer, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc.), you should include an alternate explanation of any graphics that you include in your material. This allows the visually impaired who might be using a screen reader to speak a page out loud to have description of the graphic they may not be able to see. Even mediocre editing tools allow you to add this so-called "alt" attribute. WebAIM has detailed articles on using the accessbility features of several popular web authoring packages including FrontPage and Dreamweaver MX and MX2004. For More InformationMore information is available from UMUC's Accessibility in Distance Education site. |
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