Transcript About GRADE

Voluntary Guidelines for
Accessible Distance Education
GRADE Leadership
Institute
August 2005
Atlanta, Georgia
GRADE Funding and Copyright
Funded by the Office of Post Secondary
Education (OPE) at the U.S. Department of
Education under Grant #P333A020050.
©2002 All Rights Reserved,
Georgia Tech Research Corporation.
About GRADE
• GRADE’s mission is to provide resources
and training to improve the accessibility of
online education.
About GRADE
• GRADE works in partnership with
MERLOT to address the issues of online
learning objects. One such initiative is the
creation of voluntary guidelines for
accessible learning objects.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Institutes of higher learning are steadily
shifting the delivery of courses from more
traditional teaching to online distance
learning methods.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• According to a 2003 report from the
National Center for Educational Statistics
(NCES), in the 2000–2001 academic year,
there were approximately 3,077,000
students enrolled in all distance education
courses offered by 2-year and 4-year
institutions in the United States.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• These institutions offered an estimated
127,400 different distance education
courses on the undergraduate and
graduate levels.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• As distance education becomes more and
more prevalent, the needs of students with
disabilities may be overlooked.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• A 1999 NCES study showed that 6% of the
undergraduate population had some form
of disability, and that percentage will
continue to grow as students with
disabilities receive increasing
accommodations at the elementary and
secondary levels.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• The design of many online learning
courses erects barriers to the full
participation of students and instructors
with some types of disabilities.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Example - A 2003 NCES study found that
only 18% of institutions surveyed reported
that they followed established
accessibility guidelines for their websites.
Does the Law Require it?
• Short answer - No single law or court
decision requires educators to provide
online courses in a format that is
accessible to students with disabilities.
Does the Law Require it?
• Instead, a patchwork of federal laws—
some of them passed before the advent of
the Internet — apply to online education in
various ways.
Relevant Laws
• Examples:
– Section 504 of the Rehabilitaton Act (1973)
– Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
– Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (1998)
Relevant Laws
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that institutions with federal
funding not exclude or discriminate
against people with disabilities.
Relevant Laws
• Americans with Disabilities Act - prohibits
discrimination or unequal access to
services. The ADA also requires
equivalent communication, which the
Department of Justice has interpreted as
applying to internet communication.
Relevant Laws
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires federal departments or agencies
to provide accessible electronic and
information technology to employees and
the public seeking information or services
from the agency.
Relevant Laws
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act includes standards (www.section508.gov)
but they only apply directly to federal
entities. In addition, they do not cover
many of the file formats most-used in
distance education.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Of primary concern is the integration of
existing information technology – such as
Internet sites, spreadsheets, or video
lectures – with assistive technology
devices utilized by people with disabilities.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Assistive technology alone does not
remove all access barriers in online
education.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• While assistive technology can help
provide increased access to computers,
online learning offerings must be
designed to work with assistive
technology devices – such as screen
readers, alternative keyboards, and
switches – to be fully accessible to
students with disabilities.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• This has two important implications for
online instructors.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• First, instructors with courses or modules
that have already been developed and that
are available for students should be
reviewed for accessibility, and if need be,
retrofitted to accommodate students with
disabilities.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Second, instructors working to develop
new courses or modules should be aware
of accessibility issues and work to ensure
that their products are universallydesigned to provide the greatest level of
usability for all students.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• As a plus - designing online courses that
are accessible to students with disabilities
results in courses that are easier to use
and understand for everyone.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• For example, accessible online courses
that provide alternative text with images
can allow students to search for key
words and phrases.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Captioned videos may help students
whose instructor’s primary language
differs from others in the class and whose
speech is not easy to understand. They
can also help students who are taking
courses in a non-primary language.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Accessible courses are more compatible
with many browsing devices, such as
wireless handheld computers, as well as
with emerging semantic web technologies,
such as style sheets and extendable
markup.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• But teachers, instructional designers and
others often do not know how to design or
retrofit courses to increase accessibility.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• Guidelines for this process exist, but they
are not uniform. They are often hard to
find and vary widely between applications
– requiring significant study effort to learn
each new approach.
The Problem – Why Guidelines?
• A set of guidelines following a consistent
structure, and covering the mostfrequently used types of material in online
courses, can assist instructors to create
more accessible learning objects.
Consistent structure will require less
learning time and promote efficient
development.
The Guidelines
• GRADE discovered that post-secondary
education courses often use the following
technologies/applications:
– HTML
– Adobe PDF
– Macromedia Flash
The Guidelines
– Microsoft Excel
– Microsoft PowerPoint
– Microsoft Word
– Video
The Guidelines
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/)
are a voluntary set of guidelines for HTML
accessibility.
The Guidelines
• They have proven utility and flexibility,
and have influenced other widely used
“standards” such as the Section 508
regulations (http://www.section508.gov/)
and the Adobe PDF Solutions for
Accessibility
(http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/s
olutionsacc.html).
The Guidelines
• GRADE used the WCAG structure as a
basis for its guidelines, and applied the
WCAG principles to the “second
generation” applications most used by
instructors.
The Guidelines
• Our goals:
– The guidelines must address “second
generation” accessibility.
– They must address different disability types.
– They must address different products.
– The guidelines must address different
priorities.
The Guidelines
• The result – a three-tiered approach that includes
practical techniques and tips for greater usability.
– “Must” – items critical to basic access for people
with disabilities
– “Should” – items that can make access
significantly easier
– “May” – items that can provide added functionality
for people with disabilities.
The Guidelines
• Let’s take a look at one set of the draft
guidelines …
The Guidelines
• PowerPoint Examples
– Bad http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/DoubleTreeSho
w_files/frame.html
– Good http://www.txreviews.com/merlot/final.html
The Guidelines
• Video Example
– “Math is Everywhere”
The Guidelines
• More examples of files that illustrate use
of the guidelines can be found at
www.accesselearning.net
The Guidelines
• Please give us feedback on these
guidelines.
– Are they easy to use?
– Effective?
– Do they cover the topics you need?
Contact GRADE
• GRADE www.catea.org/grade
• Access E-Learning
• Phone:
• Fax:
• Email:
www.accesselearning.net
404-894-4960 (v/tty)
404-894-9320
[email protected]