Abstract

O’Ne ll, Arned llo-Sánchez, & Tangney
as to gain insights into accessibility online. Furthermore, our approach is aimed at
providing BVI students with the skills to build Web sites that are accessible to both
BVI and sighted people, and not only to a minority, often isolated, BVI audience.
In order to combat this isolation, skills pertinent to sighted viewers, such as page
layout, tables, or insertion of images, are covered in the course to enable BVI students
to communicate with the widest possible audience. In addition, the fact that
the medium of delivery is the Internet, and that the course is written in HTML, sets
the entire experience in the actual context for which the learning is intended. An
additional attempt to engage and motivate learners is made by integrating mechanisms
and occasions for collaborative construction of knowledge (Herrington, 2000;
Nelson, 1999). Thus, the learners are supported and scaffolded by mentors who
provide assistance, when required, through e-mail. Mentors also provide learners
with timely, personal feedback on the work submitted. Moreover, consideration is
given to the presentation of the material with increasing difficulty as the learner
progresses through the course. This is done to provide measured challenges and
help maintain the motivation among the participants. Finally, a clear purpose for
learning is established through implementing Gagne’s instructional design theory,
as discussed next.
The nine events of instruction form the basis of the structure of the course, and
they are executed as follows. Gaining attention is attempted through providing an
introduction to each lesson to draw the participants in; informing learners of the
objectives is achieved by clearly outlining these at the beginning of each instructional
unit; stimulating recall of prior learning is addressed by providing a brief summary
of what participants need to know from previous units in each section; presenting
the stimulus is implemented through the presentation of the actual lesson; provision
of guidance is inbuilt throughout the course and also offered by mentors available
when assistance is needed; eliciting performance is facilitated through the provision
of exercises and activities and the ”requirement” to submit the work for correction;
provision of feedback is realised through the intervention of mentors and through
online and e-mail input and output mechanisms; assessing performance is also
implemented through the participation of mentors, but most importantly through
the immediate feedback students get from the work completed. Thus, students also
had the option of testing their HTML through the use of an interactive form. This
displayed the HTML that they wrote within a live Web page, using php scripting
and a MySQL database; enhancing retention and transfer is attempted by revisiting
the topics covered at the end of a lesson and at different stages throughout the
course. In addition, the exercises provided are also aimed at reinforcing what has
been learnt.
A final design consideration worth mentioning is the fact that our course adheres
to the principle of HTML universality in that it is written with HTML that is accessible
and consistently read and understood by different browsers (Figures 3 and 4).
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