Only about one quarter of the 54 million disabled adults in the US are employed according to Business Week, 20 March 2000. Add to that the one-third of the baby boomers who will have a disability and you have a sizable market for courses that can be accessed by a person with a disability. Despite this situation, the recent reality has been that many online courses, just like many on campus courses, are not designed to be easily accessed by persons with disabilities. When a disabled person enrolled in a class, institutions arrange for the special case with Braille books, interpreters, and other necessary accommodations. In online courses, the accessibility situation is both easier and more complex. Since the online courses are digital they are technically easier to modify than paper books and the process is more complex because the course is now situated inside of a learning management system that is inside an educational web site.
Last year there was a study by Greg Gay at SNOW
(Special Needs Opportunity Windows) called Inclusion in an Electronic Classroom - 2000 that formed the background for the current work. This project was to be an extension of the research started earlier that assessed the pedagogical effectiveness of online educational delivery applications (see http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/). The tools that were previously assessed will be further evaluated for their support of accessible design from the perspectives of administrator, designer or instructor, and student. The objectives of Inclusion in an Electronic Classroom - 2000 study are to:
1) investigate barriers faced by disabled individuals in Web based learning environments,
2) educate the general public and governing bodies concerning accessibility issues associated with Web based instruction,
3) make recommendations to courseware developers on methods to increase their products' support of accessible design,
4) provide guidelines for course designers and instructors to ensure the accessibility of their curriculum materials.
The participants in the study represented the following disability groups: Blind, Vision Impaired, Mobility Impaired, and Learning Disabled. The technologies with which individuals of these groups will access the courseware tools will depend on the nature of their disabilities. Assistive technologies could include voice recognition, screen reading, screen enhancement, onscreen keyboards, or text-to-speech systems. (see http://snow.utoronto.ca/initiatives/oltproposal.html#PROJECTD and details of the Observer Recording Sheet for WebCT at http://snow.utoronto.ca/initiatives/access_study/obs_protocol/record_sheet_webct.rtf and a summary of problems at http://snow.utoronto.ca/initiatives/access_study/sources.html)
The Inclusion in an Electronic Classroom - 2000 study compared 6 learning management systems including WebCT. Greg Gay has presented some of the project results (see Greg Gay) which indicated that overall accessibility ratings were quite similar among the platforms evaluated with WebCT in the middle of the distribution.
Since WebCT is the platform of choice in many institutions in British Columbia including the Centre for Curriculum Transfer and Technology (www.C2T2.ca) there was some concern and local interest in how accessibility for persons with disabilities could be realized using WebCT. Compliance with government standards regarding accessibility for persons with disabilities has created the need for determining how well a particular course complies. The basic idea was that as with financial resources an audit process could be used to assess the accessibility of courses. The present project was intended to meet this need. A Course Accessibility Audit Process was developed and piloted on six entry level courses in the business area. These courses arose from a grass roots involvement of business instructors to develop online resources. The course content material was developed by faculty with the aide of instructional designers into six entry-level courses. The pedagogical approach was to house the content in a shared WebCT course and for faculty to also have individual WebCT course sites where they managed the communications related to their delivery of the course. This is similar to the on campus practice of having the same textbook for several sections of the same course taught by different faculty.
The early results of this audit process will be presented highlighting the issues addressed and presenting strategic approaches to the management of compliance to Accessibility Level 1 standards in a WebCT environment. The audit process was designed to have two basic components: checking the content pages for accessibility with Bobby 3.2 syntax checker and hands on checking of the WebCT navigation and course content pages by two persons with visual disabilities using the JAWS 3.5 screen reader. For the purposes of the audit the course content sites were converted from WebCT 2.0 to WebCT 3.1 and the newer version was the one evaluated by the syntax checker and by the two JAWS users. These courses are static in the sense that they are not the "live" courses and the content is not changing.
The accessibility audit process was done on a snapshot of the courses prior to a major course revision cycle that is to start in June. Since course revision is an ongoing process the assurance of conformance to accessibility guidelines is also an ongoing goal. The eventual goal is to have a process that can be used to indicate which courses are usable to students with disabilities and a support site with resources for faculty developing courses as well as those responsible for assuring compliance with applicable legislation. At this point the process has only begun by looking at the course contents pages.
Very Early Results for the ABT Business Math Calculator Skills Course:
The Bobby 3.2 syntax check of just the table of contents page (not in the WebCT context) found no priority 1 errors but did identify 2 priority 2 errors and 2 priority 3 errors. This page uses a table to format the information into boxes that organize the visual display.
The second part of the audit process was to have the page evaluated by two persons with disabilities using the JAWS screen reader. From one of the JAWS users the feedback provides detail about how the page is experienced via synthetic speech (the numbered structure was provided to guide the quoted feedback).
1. The name of the course was ABT Business Math Calculator Skills - WebCT 3.1.3
2. Any problems getting to the page the first time -- no problems experienced
3. Any problems with reading all the information on the course outline -- no problems experienced
4. Any confusing parts of the course outline -- no problems experienced
5. Other comments and suggestions to the author of the page. The course outline page was quite easy to follow; there should not be any problems for JAWS users to read the information presented. However, the note regarding the course duration would be less confusing for students to understand if the phrase, "See the detailed Course Schedule in the Table of Contents on the left-hand side of your screen,", was followed by "or click the course schedule link for example. Overall, this course outline page seemed to be accessible based on the speech feedback from JAWS. The course outline appeared to be complete.
6. How much time you spent on this task for this course. It took approximately 60 minutes to enter the web site since this was my first time to get on it, and also, it took JAWS a little bit to go through and read the links and other information on the page before the course outline.
From the other JAWS user there was a more detailed (unnumbered quotation) account of the process:
Again this page consisted only of a title and four links. In the title, the heading "table of contents" was used. I was wondering if this could cause confusion since it only referred to the table of contents for this one page and not for the whole course. When using the arrow keys to follow down the links the voice referred to a graphic for each but did not call the graphic a link as it had on the previous page. Also, no graphic was visible on the screen. However, when the tab key was used, it correctly followed from link to link. [Then the user] Followed link to course outline.
A new frame called an action menu was added with a number of additional links. This frame appeared as a constant in some of the subsequent pages. When these links were tried, they functioned where they were suitable to the function required eg. They moved to the previous page for the previous link where a previous page existed; however, if it was the first page, naturally it could not function. When the tab key was first used to select a link, the link it started with might vary depending on the position of the cursor. Since this page was predominantly information with a few included links, it was necessary to scan it with the arrow keys which the subheadings and content correctly. I selected one of these links called "instructor list" and the result was a window came up saying that the page could not be found. A number of options were listed to test the reason and one option was a "back" link. This link would not work and the only way of returning to the course outline page was to get help in closing the window with the mouse. Returned to course information page [and then the user] followed link to course schedule.
Jaws followed the row for each column given for the course schedule and read them correctly. I am not clear on how the two blank columns at the end of each row would be filled in by a visually impaired student. Returned to course information page and then followed link to essential course information. The content information was scanned and caused no problems except for one line. This line said "for example, 15 minus 10 would be keyed as 15+10- =" but when Jaws read this sentence, it used the word "dash" for the minus symbol in front of the equals sign.
As can be see from just these two instances of feedback there is much that a simple syntax check of the pages does not provide and that persons with disabilities could provide. Each JAWS user is a unique person, as is every student taking an online course, but user feedback can inform the course design process and in some cases even the WebCT navigation design process. In summary the presentation will describe the background development and testing of an accessibility course audit process with six entry-level business courses. The process used both an automated syntax checker and manual checking by JAWS users. The implications of extending the accessibility process to online course offerings will be explored with those in attendance including accessibility issues in the new version 3.5 recently evaluated at SNOW. The Course Accessibility Audit resources will be publicly available courtesy of C2T2 via the E-Merge site at http://www.c2t2.ca/emerge/