Accessible Multimedia for Online Courses
Accessible Multimedia for Online Courses
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One of the great advantages of online learning is that course designers have a world full of media technology to enhance and increase student learning. One of the biggest disadvantages, on the other hand, is that much of it isn’t accessible to disabled learners. One of the most important things you can do to make sure that all students have equal opportunity to participate in your course is to make sure that your multimedia content is accessible.
The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials defines accessibility as “Access for all people, including people with disabilities, to web environments.” Knowing where to start with making your course accessible can be a tough task. Fortunately, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C )has developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to guide the creation of accessible web content. In the U.S., the General Services Administration oversees the Section 508 IT Accessibility Program, which has also produced guidelines for all governmental agencies and public institutions to follow in making their web content accessible. Ensuring that the multimedia components of your course are accessible will go a long way towards making your course more accessible overall.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Visual Images
Visual Images
Perhaps the easiest place to start designing for accessibility is with the visual images used in the course. Alt-text is the portion of the image that is read by screen readers so that visually impaired students will know what the image means in the context of the module in which it appears.
Photo Credit: Pixabay
Unless the image is purely decorative and has no educational or informational content, all visual images need Alt-text. This includes pictures, icons, buttons, logos, and every kind of informational visual image that might be used in an online course. Remember to only use images that do not have watermarks or make sure that the watermarks are removed, because watermarks trip up screen readers and other assistive technology.
Complex images such as equations, maps, diagrams, charts, tables, flowcharts, and other illustrations take special consideration because the 100-character limit for alt-text may not be enough to fully communicate the information in an image. In this case, you may need to add image captions, an explanation of the image in the surrounding text, or a link to an external webpage.
If you aren’t sure what you should write for your Alt-text descriptions, The Benetech Diagram Center has developed no-nonsense advice for writing effective, WCAG-compliant Alt-text descriptions, and this GSA Section 508 tutorial steps you through creating alt-text for a number of applications.
Multimedia Content
Multimedia Content
Multimedia is an indispensable component of online learning. When creating multimedia, it’s important to recognize that certain production choices can make learning inaccessible to disabled students. On the other hand, a few principled choices made during the creation of the media can give next-level accessibility to your multimedia course content.
Photo Credit Top: Creative Commons Images
Photo Credit Bottom: Pixabay
For maximum learner engagement, your course videos should be six minutes or shorter. If the topic you’re covering takes longer to present, then chunk it up into sub-topics that will take 6 minutes or less to present. Above all, keep the online learning format in mind as you create and edit your video content. One video just chopped up into six-minute segments is less engaging than a series of purposefully produced, information-chunked, 6-minute topical videos.
For maximum learner engagement, your course videos should be six minutes or shorter. If the topic you’re covering takes longer to present, then chunk it up into sub-topics that will take 6 minutes or less to present. Above all, keep the online learning format in mind as you create and edit your video content. One video just chopped up into six-minute segments is less engaging than a series of purposefully produced, information-chunked, 6-minute topical videos.
- All video content should include closed captions and transcripts for the hard-of-hearing and audio descriptions of what’s on the screen for visually impaired learners. Audio descriptions are easily written into the script that you use to make your video. The closed-captions should be grammatically correct and accurately synchronized with the sound and speech in the video. Auto-generated captions are a timesaver, but autocaption AI typically has an average accuracy rate of 75%. To make sure your videos are accessible, manually edit and synchronize the captions.
- Instructor presence is an important part of any online learning experience. While filming the video, try to remain upbeat in your presentation: speak a bit faster and more enthusiastically than you normally would. Add a small cameo image of you speaking in the corner of the video, or occasionally intersperse your talking face among the slides you are presenting to make the video more engaging. Don’t worry about having a fancy background or studio for filming. Videos with a casual feel, shot in an informal setting are more engaging.
- Production and post-production choices greatly impact the accessibility and learner interest in your course videos. Dynamic elements like screen changes, animations, graphics, etc. are more interesting than a simple narrated screencast. Edit the videos to remove long, awkward pauses, jumbled speech, filler words (“Uhhh...”, “Ummmm..”) and audible breaths. If you are making a tutorial video, it is a good idea to create a table of contents or video markers so that students can skip to the part they need to review. If you’re making informational videos, focus on that first-watch experience that will hold the learner’s attention.
Using these tips to guide your multimedia planning and production will ensure that your online course is accessible to all learners. If you’d like to learn more about making your course multimedia content accessible, check out the how-to guides and tutorials that are available from the GSA Section 508 program.
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