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Designing accessible and usable learning environments
Header image taken from Pinterest
This was the last workshop of the course. In the beginning, we discussed about the meaning of accessibility.
There were simple to more complicated answers to that, starting from the literal explanation which is something that is "within reach", then going to more complex definitions of "designing environments either physical or digital that can be usable by anyone regardless of limitations that they might have"
Relevant to this discussion, I remembered during my bachelor studies when I had taken a course about e-Accessibility and Assistive Technology, we were talking about the definition of disability. The instructor at that time had said to us that "disability is relevant and is defined by situational factors as well. If, for example, we were living in a world where all ceilings were lower than a standing's person height level, then we would all have to live our lives bending down, whereas a person on a wheelchair would not be affected."
Therefore, this points adds to the necessity of making sure that the situational factors are taken care of as much as possible, to the extent that we can affect that.
Afterwards we discussed about the difference between equality vs equity. The famous quote attributed to activist DeRay Mckesson was mentioned here, quoting "The difference between equity and equality is that equality is when everyone gets the same thing, and equity is when everyone gets the things they deserve.”
These discussions introduced us to the topic of digital accessibility.
We then went on to explore different legislations and standards and examine the state of accessibility of our websites.
Legislation and standards
Legislation and standards
The purpose here was to explore the WCAG standards, as many as we could, and test the levels of accessibility of our learning portfolios.
Below I present some results of the standards that I tested, as well as areas that I need to further develop in order for my website to be fully accessible.
At that point, a discussion was made about how this workshop could perhaps be more useful if it was integrated in the beginning of the course when we hadn't developed any of its contents yet. However, being aware about accessibility issues is something, in my opinion, that should come from personal inquiry and a "design for all" mindset that apriori takes into account all possible viewers/consumers of the content that we create.
Therefore, this was a good reminder that accessibility is not
Color Contrast Checker
Color Contrast Checker
My theme has 2 other background colors besides the white one. I checked them both for color contrast.
The website that was used was this one.
Link Purpose - In Context (Level A)
Link Purpose - In Context (Level A)
TODO:
-> Things to fix: links that say 'click here'
-> Check if all the links i use have purposeful text
What you need to know
Anchor text is comprised of the words you attach to a link.
Keep in mind that the whole point of link text is to let the user know where they are headed if the click on it.
This success criterion allows for more ambiguous link text, so long as the preceding text provides context for the link.
This is actually one of the more common accessibility failures of websites, but the good news is it’s one of the easiest things to fix.
What you need to do
Use keywords that have meaning when you’re creating links.
Don’t use terms like “click here” and “learn more.”
Write link descriptions that are easy to read and keep your anchors concise.
Be sure to write useful alt text when linking images.
Don’t create redundancy.
Headings and Labels (Level AA)
Headings and Labels (Level AA)
TODO IN MY LEARNING PORTFOLIO:
Check if im using clear and concise language in all headings
Non-text Content (Level A)
Non-text Content (Level A)
TODO IN MY LEARNING PORTFOLIO:
Provide alt-text for all images. Some have been done already but check ALL of them.
Accessibility in the context of educational technology and pedagogy
Accessibility in the context of educational technology and pedagogy
Reflection Exercise 2
Reflection Exercise 2
Check UDL guidelines and make sure that your project follows those as much as possible.
Reflect on discussion below how your project work follows UDL guidelines. What should be developed further?
Design Multiple Means of Engagement
1. Welcoming Interests and Identities - Optimise Choice and Autonomy - in our project the learners are offered the choices at each section in the story where their choices can inform the outcome of the story. We hope that it optimises relevance, value and authenticity because they will relate the choices made in the non-linear story to choices they have available to them in real life.
2. Sustaining Effort and Persistence - Foster Collaboration, interdependence and collective learning - our task in the third lesson of our sequence of lessons includes collaboration and the feedback received from the teacher who tested our product with her class suggested that the non-linear story prompted some good discussions for the students to learn from each others experiences there too.
3. Sustaining Effort and Persistence - Clarify meaning and purpose of goals - Non-linear story shows the real life effects of making poor choices online so therefore reiterates the goals and purposes of the lessons.
4. Emotional Capacity - Develop awareness of self and others - our project helps learners understand how their own choices can impact their future lives as not everything that they deleted online will be forgotten about (or truly deleted!)
5. Emotional Capacity - Promote individual and collective reflection - there are lots of opportunities for personal reflection included within the lesson plans, presentations and pre-/post- lesson activities.
Design Multiple Means of Representation
1. Perception - Support multiple ways to perceive information - the story is written in text format but also has audio options available if the learner feels they would prefer to hear the story read to them or requires this because of an accessibility issue. There are also some gifs/images across the story that support the understanding of the action within the story.
2. Building Knowledge - Connect prior knowledge to new learning - within our sequence of lessons we have a progression of understanding of the topic, starting with some more simplified knowledge about digital safety, moving on to more focused knowledge gathering and then finally onto presenting and generating knowledge by the learner in the final lesson.
Design Multiple Means of Action and Expression
1. Expression and Communication - Use multiple tools for construction, composition, and creativity - In the 3rd lesson of our sequence, we have given the learners opportunities to develop a product on their own to express what they have learnt and the tools on offer are relevant to the topic because they are online tools such as Canva to make an concept map/newspaper infographic, sound recorder to make a podcast or MS Word for writing a story of their own.
2. Strategy Development - Set meaningful goals - We believe that our sequence of lessons covers this as we have clear goals for the whole project and for each individual lesson too.
Areas to Improve
1. Design Multiple Means of Representation - Language and Symbols - This is an area we could improve. We did consider the language used during our story because the test group were English as foreign language speakers, and we also asked questions within the feedback from them about the language level, however we do believe there is room to add in more clarification of vocabulary - possibly pre-teaching any necessary vocab or including a glossary of terms.
2. Design Multiple Means of Action and Expression - Interaction - Optimise access to accessible materials and assistive and accessible technologies and tools - This is an area we did think we had covered by including the audios, however on further discussion, it may not be as accessible as we first thought, as it may not be clear for someone with a visual impairment where to click to get the sound and we are not sure if the website we have used to host our non-linear story would be compatible with an inbuilt screen reader. This is something we would need to investigate further and look into the WCAG standards for coders.
Accessibility Testing Tools
Accessibility Testing Tools
Reflection Exercise 3: Test your project materials
Reflection Exercise 3: Test your project materials
Use the screen readers and other applications available in your computer/phone settings to test your project materials. Also use any support tools integrated into the applications.
WHAT observations did you make? Do you need to make any changes based on your tests?
The website we are hosting our project on includes lots of code that is beyond our understanding, however it appears that because of the MP3s and gifs/graphics, the site has scored lower on some areas as it is 'overloaded'. In order to lower these overloaded parts and get increased scores, we would need to bring someone onto the project who knew more about web developing and hosting a site in order for them to improve the code and compress audios etc.
When using the screen reader on my computer, it read the text well but did not read the button text automatically which is a problem as someone with visual impairments might not be able to navigate the site and recognise that there are buttons to choose from in order to progress and move the story forward.
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