Dana Gullo, Instructional Designer at Wilmington University, http://wilmu.edu/online, shares how to create ADA Compliant Course Sites. Learn simple ways on how you can transform your courses to be more ADA compliant. Explore areas such as creating accessible PDF documents, appropriate font, style, and color choices, video captioning, and graphics considerations.
These Instructional Design tips are especially helpful for the visually impaired and hard of hearing student in your online course.
This presentation was first shared at the 2016 Northeast E-learning Consortium, view additional archived presentations at this link: http://northeastelearning.org/2016-archives/
A Step Toward Creating ADA Compliant Course Sites, presented by Wilmington University's Instructional Design Team
1. A Step Toward Creating ADA Compliant Course
Sites:
Instructional Design tips for the visually impaired
and hard of hearing student in your online course.
Presented by: Dana Gullo
2.
3.
4. One fifth (20%) of the population has some kind of
disability.
Not all of these people have disabilities that make it
difficult for them to access the internet, but it is still a
significant portion of the population.
Businesses would be unwise to purposely exclude 20,
10, or even 5 percent of their potential customers
from their web sites. For schools, universities, and
government entities it would not only be unwise, but
in many cases, it would also violate the law.
5. Are our courses Accessible?
Section 508:
An amendment to the
United States Workforce
Rehabilitation Act of 1973,
is a federal law mandating
that all electronic and
information technology
developed, procured,
maintained, or used by the
federal government be
accessible to people with
disabilities.
ADA Compliance:
The Department of Justice
(DOJ) published the
Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) Standards for
Accessible Design in
September 2010. These
standards state that all
electronic and information
technology must be
accessible to people with
disabilities.
8. Check List for your courses
Type Formatting
Word, Power Point, and PDF documents
Links
Images
Audio and Video
9. Type Formatting
and Document Organization
• Use sans-serif fonts designed for legibility on the computer screen (e.g., Arial, Verdana,
Helvetica).
• Use bold or italic text to display emphasis.
• Don’t underline words since on a web page this indicates hyperlinks.
• Avoid using colored text (such as red) for emphasis since screen readers will not indicate it is
there.
• Avoid including moving or blinking text.
• Keep the number of fonts used in a document to a minimum.
14. Links
Links are more useful when they make sense
out of context.
Avoid non-informative link phrases such as:
•click here
•here
•more
•read more
•link to [some link destination]
•info
18. Additional Resources
ADA Standards for Accessible Design
University of Central Florida Accessible Content
Formatting Guidelines
Web AIM
Northeastern University Instructor Resource Center:
Best Practices for Online Course Accessibility
National Center on Universal Design for Learning:
Postsecondary Education and UDL
Notas do Editor
Blindness, low vision, color-blindness, Deafness and hard-of-hearing, Inability to use a mouse, slow response time, limited fine motor control, Learning disabilities, distractibility, inability to remember or focus on large amounts of information.
Each of the categories of disabilities requires some type of adaptation to the online content. The adaptations benefit nearly everyone, not just people with disabilities. Illustrations, chunking content, and clear navigation. Captioning or transcripts also help others than just the Deaf community. Health care environments especially.
Apply heading styles to your document. Headings are required for screen readers to be able to read the document.
For more than one column of text, create a table with column or row headings.
Apply the appropriate list style to bulleted and/or numbered lists.
Use bold or italic text to display emphasis. (Please do not use underlined words. Underlined text on a web page indicates hyperlinks.)
To ensure accessibility, please do not use colors to indicate meaning (e.g., colored text or highlighted table rows and columns)- Color blind individuals will have a problem distinguishing differences.
Apply heading styles to your document. Headings are required for screen readers to be able to read the document.
For more than one column of text, create a table with column or row headings.
Apply the appropriate list style to bulleted and/or numbered lists.
Use bold or italic text to display emphasis. (Please do not use underlined words. Underlined text on a web page indicates hyperlinks.)
To ensure accessibility, please do not use colors to indicate meaning (e.g., colored text or highlighted table rows and columns)- Color blind individuals will have a problem distinguishing differences.
If you cannot highlight text in a PDF document, it is not accessible. A screen reader will interpret an inaccessible PDF as an image, not text.
Start with a Word document and convert this document to PDF
PDF documents may be appropriate to use in your online course if the document is a form, historical document, or if the document is has a complex layout. PDF documents can be created to be accessible, however, they are not as navigable with a screen reader.
Working with Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) Use slide layout templates whenever possible.
Write presenter’s notes in the provided area.
Apply alternative test (ALT text) to images.
Add captions to the slide or presenter’s notes for complicated images (e.g. diagrams or maps)
If embedding video, be sure that the video is appropriately captioned and the player controls are accessible.
If embedding audio, include a transcript.
Use built-in accessibility checker: File>info>check for issues>check for accessibility
Working with Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) Use slide layout templates whenever possible.
Write presenter’s notes in the provided area.
Apply alternative test (ALT text) to images.
Add captions to the slide or presenter’s notes for complicated images (e.g. diagrams or maps)
If embedding video, be sure that the video is appropriately captioned and the player controls are accessible.
If embedding audio, include a transcript.
Use built-in accessibility checker: File>info>check for issues>check for accessibility
Links are more useful when they make sense out of context.
Avoid non-informative link phrases such as:
click here
here
more
read more
link to [some link destination]
info
Alternative text provides a textual alternative to non-text content in web pages.
Alternative text serves several functions:
It is read by screen readers in place of images allowing the content and function of the image to be accessible to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities.
It is displayed in place of the image in browsers if the image file is not loaded or when the user has chosen not to view images.
Avoid the following color combinations, which are especially hard on color blind people: Green & Red; Green & Brown; Blue & Purple; Green & Blue; Light Green & Yellow; Blue & Grey; Green & Grey; Green & Black
Use high contrast: Color blind people can still perceive contrast, as well as differences in hue, saturation and brightness. Use these to your advantage (Hint: many color blind individuals report being able to better distinguish between bright colors rather than dim ones, which tend to blur into one another)
Don’t assume colors will signal emotions in and of themselves: If you’re using red to signal “bad,” “warning,” or “watch out,” consider adding another symbolic element to get the point across to color blind viewers.
Audio and videos need to incorporate features that make them accessible to everyone. Providing transcripts that can be downloaded and/or closed captions with audio and video are two of the main ways of making audio/video accessible to hearing and/or vision impaired users. More and more, closed captioning is becoming a preferred method.