The goal of this presentation is to provide a brief overview of current situation in a field of document accessibility at Masaryk University, Brno, describe the current state, issues we face, and present some suggestions how to fix them.

1. How to ensure accessibility of study
materials,
published at Masaryk University
Radek Pavlíček, Teiresias Centre, Masaryk University, Brno

2. Mission of Teiresias Centre is to guarantee accessibility of all
study programmes at Masaryk University. Nowadays we quite
often face issues connected with documents inaccessibility.

3. Although we are able to prepare materials, meeting the accessibility
requirements, there is still a lot what should be done to ensure better
accessibility of study materials in general and make the preparation
easier.

4. hundreds of students with special needs
thousands of employees
Although the vast majority of university students with special needs in
the Czech Republic are students of Masaryk University, it is true that
study materials are almost exclusively created and published with
respect to the needs and preferences of students without special
needs.

5. Changes, leading to the document
accessibility, are often made only with an
intuition and empathy and reflect only
needs of particular student.

6. Our mission is to change this state and prepare a conception
of complex universal learning design environment, in which
following goals are reached according to the general
standards and regardless this or that specific kind of
accessibility is currently required.

7. In this presentation I would like to focus on demands
and needs of students with visual impairment.

8. Theirs demands can be covered mostly by technical
means and authors could quite easily learn them and
start to use them.
Good structure
Sufficient Accessible PDF
contrast

9. Resources
Resources, in which study materials are published, and
ways, how they are created, are very heterogeneous. A
couple of examples follows.

10. Document Server IS MUNI

11. Resources – ELPORTÁL

12. Masaryk University – University Press

13. Books

14. Slajdy

15. YouTbe

16. Current state is strongly influenced by
a lot of factors – we will focus mostly
on human, legal and technical.

17. Affecting factors
Human
Affecting
factors
Legal Technical

18. Human factors
• Authors don´t have sufficient awareness and
knowledge about accessibility or they aren´t
interested in accessibility.
• Students don´t have sufficient knowledge how
to use their assistive technologies to read
study materials they are provided.
• Sometimes it´s quite difficult to get the
information which study materials student
really needs.

19. Legal Factors
• There is no conception yet in evaluating
accessibility of study materials. Nowadays it´s
is done only on demand.
• Authoritative source of techniques, practical
advices and tutorials how to create accessible
study materials (or documents in general) is
missing.

20. Technical factors
• Students have outdated technical equipment
(screen readers, screen magnifiers).
• Some “umbrella web portal”, gathering all the
information about accessibility, links to the other
resources, contacts, help, etc. is missing.
• There are accessibility issues concerning not only
the study materials, but also the environment in
which they are presented.
• There is no way how to in time and easily get the
information that student with special needs
enroll for concrete course.

21. Here are my suggestions, how to fix
some issues in human, legal and
technical factors mentioned before.

22. Suggestions
Human
Suggestions
Legal Technical

23. Human factors
• Accessibility training courses for authors.
• Wider technical and methodological
assistance to authors of study materials.

24. Legal factors
• Include a duty to create accessible documents
as a part of some university directive.
• The proposed EU Directive on the accessibility
of public-sector bodies’ websites.

25. Technical factors (1/2)
• To have a possibility to get information from
Masaryk University Information System, that
student with special needs enrolled for
concrete course.
• To have a permanent approach to sources
which can be an alternative for standard
printed study materials, which are not publicly
available.

26. Technical factors (2/2)
• To have a tool, enabling automatic
accessibility evaluation of study materials,
which are uploaded to Masaryk University
Information System.
• To create Web portal (e.g.
pristupnost.muni.cz), gathering all the
information about accessibility and universal
learning design, contacts, tutorial,
directives/guidelines, etc.

27. Conclusion

28. Topic of universal learning design and
accessibility of study materials is
extremely wide. But some ways are
quite easy to implement.

29. Education

30. University web portal,
concerning accessibility

31. Promotion of
accessibility

32. Contact info
pavlicek@teiresias.muni.cz
@radlicek

33. Photo credits
• http://udl4all.pbworks.com/f/1214179044/UDLWordle.jpg
• http://simmonsatshowcase.wikispaces.com/file/view/Testing_Cartoon.jpg
/33641679/Testing_Cartoon.jpg
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/97544179@N00/3131152669/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/68187942@N00/3287986172/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/25650455@N03/5451897212/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/25509772@N00/4261478725/