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

11 – Accessibility and Universal Design
lated by Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman.
The instrument was developed by Richard M. Felder
and Barbara A. Soloman of North Carolina State
University.”
• Biology Success! Teaching Diverse Learners
http://www.landmarkcollege.org/institute/grants%5F
research/biology%5Fsuccess/book.html
“Biology Success! is an innovative project based at
Landmark College in Putney, VT and funded by the
National Science Foundation’s Research in Disabilities
Education program (HRD No. 0004264). Biology
Success! asserts that students with learning differences
can succeed in high school and college introductory
biology courses when the curriculum has
been designed to respond to their learning needs.”
Summary
Web accessibility is especially critical in education to
ensure that all students have fair and equivalent access
to learning materials. Government institutions in the US
and UK are required by law to make their web content
accessible. Standards and practices for accessibility are
agreed upon by the W3C and implemented by the WAI.
Sight, hearing, mobility, and learning disabilities can
affect how your students access and interpret information
on the Web. Assistive technologies can help with
some of the difficulties faced; some must be addressed
by your website itself. When making an accessible site,
start by thinking about its design, structure, and content.
It is neither quick nor easy to create multiple pathways
to reach learning objectives in the online environment.
It will take time to build up a set of online
materials, activities, and assessment strategies that accommodates
the wide variety of learning needs of students
with disabilities and learning preferences of all
students. Your efforts will create an inclusive space for
everyone, including students traditionally marginalized
by their needs in the online environment.
As the old saying goes, “You cannot please all of the
people, all of the time.” In our case here, we are just
trying to increase the probability that each student will
succeed in our online course area, regardless of his or
her disabilities, learning preferences, or life situation.
We do this by increasing the number of methods by
which students get and use the content. We do this,
whenever possible, by giving options to students regarding
how we will evaluate their performance. We do
this by taking the time to engage students in different
ways and at different levels. We do this by applying UDL
principles to online teaching and learning.
Once you have taken UDL principles into consideration
when developing your course materials, use correct
XHTML and CSS—or a program that can generate this
for you—to build or modify the site according to the
guidelines provided by the WCAG. This will help to
ensure that the technology does not create barriers for
students with disabilities.
Glossary
accessibility: the practice of making web pages and
other computer-based media accessible to all users, ensuring
that those with disabilities have equivalent access
as those without
ADA: Americans with Disabilities Act
alt text: alternative text, displayed in place of an image
assistive technology (or adaptive technology): software
or hardware that enables people with disabilities to
perform tasks that would be difficult or impossible with
the assistance of technology
audio description: an additional narration track for
the visually impaired, accompanying television and
movies. A narrator describes the action in the scene
during pauses in the audio.
caption: 1. on-screen description of all significant
audio content in a video. 2. HTML attribute to describe
a table, displayed with the table.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): code used to define the
presentation of a document written in HTML or XHTML
CMS: content management system, used to more
easily maintain pages on a website
deductive learners: students who prefer starting with
more structure, deriving consequences and applications
from the concepts and theories
Dynamic HTML (DHTML): a collection of technologies,
such as HTML and Javascript, used to create
interactive or animated websites.
headtracking: controlling the mouse pointer by use
of head motion
headswitch: a button that can be activated with light
pressure from the head or any body part that can be
moved accurately and reliably
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): a markup
language used to create documents on the Web containing
text, graphics, sound, video, and/or hyperlinks
inductive learners: students who prefer beginning
with meaningful examples before extrapolating the main
concepts or theories
intuitive learners: students who prefer reflective activities
and resources that require imagination
174 Education for a Digital World