Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

11 – Accessibility and Universal Design
proach could range from “This is how these theories
apply to real-world events” to “Some of you will find this
really cool!” Both approaches have their merits, so use
them together. To determine what real-world events
interest students, or to find what they feel is really cool,
talk to some of the students before the term gets rolling,
or ask the class to send you one idea of each.
Ask for feedback
In Chapter 24, Evaluating and Improving Online
Teaching Effectiveness, we cover a number of ways to
get feedback from students. Using those strategies, you
can include questions about motivation or engagement
to learn how well you are doing to get students more
involved in their learning success. Go over the results
with the class to come up with additional ideas or inspirations.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Looking at some of the concepts and suggestions in this
section, you might be asking yourself, “This is helpful,
but what does this have to do with accessibility?” For
this book, remember that the term “accessibility” refers
to the extent to which it is possible for all students to
succeed in our collective online course environments.
About Web accessibility
WHAT MAKES A SITE ACCESSIBLE?
Accessibility is about making sure all the information on
your website is available to all users, regardless of any
disability they may have or special technology they may
be using.
“Accessibility involves making allowances for
characteristics a person cannot readily change”’.
(Building Accessible Website, Joe Clark)
WHY BOTHER?
Fairness and equality
The simplest and most direct answer to this is that if
your site is inaccessible to users with disabilities, you are
excluding a section of the population from your content.
If your students cannot access the course materials, they
could be placed at a distinct disadvantage and their
coursework could suffer as a result.
Accessibility benefits usability
Many site designers and developers drag their feet and
grumble when asked to make their site accessible. There
is a mistaken perception that “accessibility” means
“dumbing down” the site—that they won’t be allowed to
use any graphics or any multimedia. Frequently, websites
address accessibility by making a plain, text-only
version of every page and labelling it “accessible”. This
does no one any favours—it requires the webmaster to
maintain twice the number of pages, and provides an
inelegant solution that lumps all disabled users into the
same category.
The reality is that accessibility is a way of enhancing
your web page, and it can be done seamlessly without
taking away from the design. Many accessibility recommendations
and guidelines actually improve the integrity
of your code and the overall usability of your
interface. Usability is, simply put, how easy it is for people
to use your site.
Anything you can do to improve accessibility can also
improve usability for people without disabilities, for online
courses or any other kind of website. Consider these
examples:
• you have made the menus consistent on every page—
now everybody has an easier time finding their way
around your site, because the buttons are always in
the same place;
• you have made sure your font size can be adjusted—
now older readers with poor vision can increase the
size of the text to see it better;
• you have set a unique page title for each page—now
search engines can more accurately display your
pages in their search results;
• you have added a text description for each image—
now someone browsing with images turned off can
tell if they are missing an important diagram;
• you have added captioning to a video—now a student
using a computer in a public lab can watch it too
without needing sound;
• you haveadded an audio reading of an important
passage—now a student who learns better aurally can
enjoy the reading as well.
Legal reasons
As we have already discussed, many institutions are obligated
to provide accessible content according to national
laws.
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