2. The big picture
» Some 50-60% of your students who had support via Disabled
Student Allowances will no longer get it.
» Statutory Code of Practice for Services, public functions and
associations “where a provision, criterion or practice places a
disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, and this
relates to the provision of information, …it is reasonable to
…ensure that the information is provided in an accessible
format (p 102).
09/03/2016 2
3. So OERs are…helpful
»“ensure that the information is provided in an accessible
format”
09/03/2016 3
My text rich
resource
Her image rich
resource
His video rich
resource
Their audio
rich resource
Blind?
Dyslexic?
Deaf?
4. Or OER’s might be helpful if - 1
The resources you link to (or create) allow for
09/03/2016 4
Text magnification ……………………………………… with reflow
5. Or OER’s might be helpful if - 2
Not this …… but this ……
09/03/2016 5
6. Or OER’s might be helpful if - 3
Not this …… but this ……
09/03/2016 6
7. Or OER’s might be helpful if - 4
Not this …… but this ……
09/03/2016 7
8. Or OER’s might be helpful if – 5
09/03/2016 8
https://diagram.herokuapp.com/training/when_to_describe
9. So the content creation tool really matters
09/03/2016 9
» Open source, locally hosted, secure and future proofed
» Licence-free so access to all staff AND all learners
» Device independent – author/consume on tablets, Mac, Pc, phone.
» Built in (and continuing) accessibility
» Easy to use, familiar editing options
» Template driven for sophisticated
interactivities
» Collaborative, RSS export feeds
and inbuilt CC options
10. An open source contender
» Xerte toolkits
Inbuilt accessibility – keyboard accessible
(creating and consuming), tab order, colour
changing, link to accessibility guidance.
Browser based accessibility.
Easy navigation
Multimedia
Mobile accessibility
» tinyurl.com/xerte2016
09/03/2016 10
11. Find out more…
09/03/2016 11
Alistair McNaught
Subject Matter Specialist
Alistair.McNaught@jisc.ac.uk
jisc.ac.uk
07443 984111
Except where otherwise noted, this
work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND
13. OER Accessibility double whammy - 1
»Unknown audience
› how will your materials be
repurposed?
› how will your materials be
accessed and by whom?
09/03/2016 13
14. OER Accessibility double whammy - 2
»Unknown platform
»Unknown support
»Unknown liability
Explicitly stating how accessible your
resources are & what standards you have
worked helps authors and students.
09/03/2016 14
Deaf group sues
Harvard, MIT
over online
courses
15. Accessibility & Usability interconnected
Universal
Usable
Accessible
09/03/2016 15
Accessible to all
including those with
disabilities
Usable by all
including those
with disabilities
Designed for all
users
16. Reusable or repurposed?
» Demonstrating…
› Coastal erosion
› Fair weather cloud
formations
› Photographic
composition
» Use appropriate caption to
give context
09/03/2016 16
alt="Shore, Sandy Beach, Cloudy, Ocean,
Sea, Beach, Seascape"
17. Creating an accessible MOOC, lessons learnt!
» Creating courses for FutureLearn platform since 2013
» Designing accessible content requires planning &
commitment
› Captions and transcripts for videos are vital but time
consuming to create well.
› Platform neutral PDF formats need checking and tagging
› STEM content requires particular attention to be made
accessible to all … animations, graphs, tables, equations
09/03/2016 17
18. Tools to help with accessibility
09/03/2016 18
Magnification
Screen reading
Text to speech with highlighting
Alternative input
Speech recognition
19. Free Document Accessibility Checkers
»Structured Word document (using heading and styles e.g.
Microsoft Accessibility Checker)
»Accessible PDFs - free checker PAC 2 or online PAVE
»Calibre to convert to ePub and many other formats
»Accessible ebook checker (ePub) from International
Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
20. Check external resources – Web2Access
» Integrating external resources
can bring accessibility and
usability challenges
» Web2Access reviews
accessibility top 100 e-learning
resources
» web2access.org.uk
09/03/2016 20
21. Accessibility Tools for authors & learners
»ATbar: open source
browser toolbar.
»www.atbar.org
»Marketplace allows for
customisation e.g.
› Moodle
› WordPress
»ATbar for Windows: text
to speech & colour
overlay for windows
09/03/2016 21
22. Making STEM accessible
» Use LaTeX or MathML not images
» STEMReader plug-in forATbar allows maths to be read & checked
» www.stemreader.org.uk
09/03/2016 22
open bracket, 4 x
minus 3 y, close
bracket, plus 7 open
bracket, x plus y, close
bracket.
23. Looking forward… OER brings
• Wide range of expertise – learning
from each other and spreading this
knowledge out to stakeholders
• Crossing boundaries between
accessibility, usability and
personalisation.
• Opening the subject of digital
accessibility out beyond the
gatekeepers
09/03/2016 23
24. Using Open Education to develop accessibility skills
Stepwise Approach
Each week is made up of activities
broken down into small steps
representing the type of content
Each step is timed,
checked for accessibility
with named author
Copyright and legal
requirements signed
off even for OER!
A record of all
the steps is kept
for reference –
useful when
advising about
ease of access
for all
stakeholders
25. Free Accessibility Courses – Developing technical skills
» Facebook accessibility tutorial –
20 minutes
› H stands for headings and
semantic markup.
› I stands for images and labels.
› K stands for keyboard
navigation.
› E asks for you to ACT with a
little extra love with ARIA,
Colour andText
09/03/2016 25
http://accessibility.parseapp.com/
26. SlideWiki www.slidewiki.org
»Accessible platform for creating, editing & sharing OER
› SlideWiki 2.0 being developed as part of Horizon2020
project
› Collaborative authoring platform
› Interesting in trialling from 2017?
09/03/2016 26
27. Contact details
09/03/2016 27
Abi James a.james@soton.ac.uk
EA Draffan ead@ecs.soton.ac.uk
AccessibilityTeam
Web and Internet Science
University of Southampton
https://access.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
Notes de l'éditeur
OERs and accessibility – what’s the issue?
Alistair McNaught – JISC
Abi James – University of Southampton
EA Draffan – University of Southampton
1. The art of the electronically possible
Open educational resources allow a tutor to supplement their "normal" materials with a range of other materials from different practitioners. This makes it easier to provide true differentiation and to signpost different learners with different access needs to different resources.
Properly constructed resources built with accessibility in mind will allow a range of personalisation options that are useful for most learners and vital for those with disabilities.
These include:
Text reflow with magnificationMany readers will benefit from magnification. Magnification is of limited value if half the text disappears offscreen. PDFs (and html and epubs) support magnification with reflow. This is much more useful and ensures the text wraps to fit the window whatever magnification is chosen.
Text to speech:
PDFs are capable of interacting with text to speech tools provided the publisher hasn’t disabled text to speech. This has significant benefits for a range of readers – from those with visual impairment, motor impairment or dyslexia through to those with English as a second language.
PDFs are capable of recolouring the age background. This can help people with dyslexia, colour contrast difficulties or people working in more extreme light – for example very bright or very dim environment.
PDFs are capable of navigation by thumbnail images (which is very limited benefit) or by bookmarks. Bookmarks can be created to represent different heading levels in the text. This allows a reader to grasp the “semantic structure” of the text – the way the ideas are organised and relate to one another.
Image shows how the POET image description tool can lead you through s series of questions to help you identify what and when to describe an image.
EDUPUB is a consortium led by International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), Pearson and IMS Global consortium. The IDPF represent traditional ebook interests whilst IMS Global represents the world of elearning and eassessment. Publishers need to be involved in the evolution of standards. EDUPUB will not only provide interoperabililty but also ensure very high levels of accessibility. One of the mantras of the EDUPUB project is “Accessibility is non negotiable”.
Xerte toolkits
Inbuilt accessibility – keyboard accessible (creating and consuming), tab order, colour changing, link to accessibility guidance.
Browser based accessibility.
Easy navigation
Multimedia
Mobile accessibility
tinyurl.com/xerte2016 Thurs April 14thMultimedia
Unknown platform
e.g. converting from PowerPoint to PDF can lead to loss of accessibility
Unknown support
e.g will someone be able to fix an accessibility problem later?
Unknown liability
e.g. will your resources be used in a country with stricter accessibility regulations?
Harvard and M.I.T. Are Sued Over Lack of Closed Captions
Universal design:
provide multiple ways of engagement
Provide multiple means of representation
Provide multiple means for action and expression
Word accessibility checker https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Check-for-accessibility-issues-a16f6de0-2f39-4a2b-8bd8-5ad801426c7f
PAC 2 http://www.access-for-all.ch/en/pdf-lab/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac.html PAVE - http://www.pave-pdf.org/index.en.html
Calibre to convert to ePub: http://calibre-ebook.com/
Accessible ebook checker http://www.idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/content/qa/checklist-generator.php
Points to ponder on
NOTE:
Image PDFs (e.g. scans without conversion to text)
eBooks with digital right management (DRM)
Flash objects – disappearing with HTML 5