Making Online Teaching Accessible

Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities

Norman Coombs

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470892442
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Making Online Teaching Accessible offers online teachers, instructional designers, and content developers a comprehensive resource for designing online courses and delivering course content that is accessible for all students including those with visual and audio disabilities.

Grounded in the theories of learner-centered teaching and successful course design, Making Online Teaching Accessible outlines the key legislation, decisions, and guidelines that govern online learning. The book also demystifies assistive technologies and includes step-by-step guidance for creating accessible online content using popular programs like Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, as well as multimedia tools.

Including a wealth of helpful tips and suggestions for effectively communicating with disabled students, the book contains practical advice on purchasing accessible course management systems, developing solutions for inaccessibility issues, and creating training materials for faculty and staff to make online learning truly accessible.

"This valuable how-to book is a critical tool for all instructional designers and faculty who teach online. Coombs' many years as a pioneer of online teaching show in his deep knowledge of the principles that can allow the reader to apply these lessons to any learning management system (LMS)."
— Sally M. Johnstone, provost and vice president academic affairs, Winona State University, Minnesota; former executive director of WCET at WICHE

"As more and more of our social and professional lives come to be mediated by technology, online accessibility is a fundamental right, not a luxury. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with maximizing access to learning."
— Richard N. Katz, former vice president and founding director, EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

"This valuable book reflects Coombs' unique experience and commitment to the best teaching, learning, and accessibility options for all kinds of students and teachers."
— Steven W. Gilbert, founder and president, The TLT Group-Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group

chapter ONE

Creating a Level Learning Space

The emergence of information technology has changed the education process for everyone, and it has transformed most people’s personal lives as well. This truth is even more important for people with what, for the purposes of this book, I will call print and audio disabilities. Those with print disabilities need special help to surmount the obstacle posed by books and other printed materials. Lectures and other audio content present a similar barrier for those with hearing impairments.

Digitized information has been a major breakthrough for these people. Because it is display independent, it can be rendered in different modes for various purposes. In the past, traditional textbooks froze information in a single format: it was stored as print and a human intermediary or translator was needed to output it into any other form. Digitized information, however, is stored as numbers and this allows it to be printed out, displayed on a computer monitor, or even projected onto a screen so that it can be seen from the rear of a lecture hall. Specialized assistive software can render the same information in even more formats, thus providing students who have disabilities with timely and effective access to the information and creating the potential for a more level learning space for all.

This chapter has three main topics: assistive technologies, universal design, and laws and guidelines relevant to online instruction. People with disabilities often use special software—generally called assistive technology or adaptive technology—in conjunction with computers. These technologies assist the user and at the same time adapt the computer’s input and output systems to accommodate a wider spectrum of people’s needs. The universal design movement takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on making accommodations for people with special needs, it urges designers to create devices and content to include the broadest segment of the population possible. Finally, the chapter gives an overview of the laws and official guidelines in effect mandating that products and content be created in ways that will not discriminate against people with special learning needs or unique working styles or both.

HOW PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES USE COMPUTERS

As a provider of online course content, you may not really need to know how people access your content. It may not matter, for example, whether an individual is using a smart phone, a laptop computer, or a desktop computer in a college computer lab. But if you found out that a significant proportion of your students were accessing your lessons from a phone, you might design some content differently based on that knowledge.

Similarly, although it’s not absolutely essential that you know about the assistive computer software used by students with various disabilities, that awareness can help you design your online content in ways that won’t create needless barriers to their learning. And the good news is that you can employ universal design features while still using the standard content authoring tools you already use. Let’s look at the assistive technologies most commonly used by students in accessing online course content. These technologies are available for a variety of computer platforms: Mac, Windows, and Unix-based operating systems. You’ll also “meet” some typical users to get an idea of how some of your students are experiencing your course material.

Voice Recognition Technology

Voice recognition software allows the user to control the computer by speaking commands aloud and to dictate to input text into documents. Users of this type of technology are those who cannot—or cannot easily—use a standard keyboard because of motor function, visual, or certain types of learning disabilities. People with dyslexia, for example, can use a keyboard, but because they frequently jumble the sequence of letters both in reading and writing, dictating permits them to bypass this hurdle.

Penny, an auto mechanic, was in her twenties when an accident left her a quadriplegic. Thanks in part to voice recognition software, she now holds a staff position in a Pennsylvania community college, where, among other tasks, she trains faculty on how to better serve students with disabilities.

On-Screen Keyboards

People with motor impairments that prevent them from using a standard keyboard frequently use an onscreen equivalent. The computer cursor moves across an image of a keyboard at the bottom of the monitor. When it reaches the desired letter or symbol, the user triggers a single switch to input that letter into the computer. For people with little or no use of their hands and arms, the computer can track the user’s eye movement so no muscle movement is required to trigger the switch. To speed this process, the onscreen keyboard can be combined with software that predicts the desired word based on the first few letters.

As a daring teenager, Grant dove off a cliff into too-shallow water. His neck was broken, but Grant did not let that end his active life. He used an on-screen keyboard to attend college in California, earn his bachelor’s degree, and move on to productive employment.

Screen Magnification Software

Although most software applications permit the user to enlarge the screen interface and content on the monitor, the amount of enlargement allowed is limited, and often the image is degraded. Commercial screen magnification software, however, will maintain the integrity of the image while permitting enlargement from two to sixteen times normal. Obviously, this benefits people with visual impairments. Advanced screen magnification software also has the ability to use a synthetic voice to speak text, although this capability is not robust enough to meet the needs of someone who has very little or no sight.

Screen magnification software combined with speech output can also benefit people with visual and cognitive processing disabilities. Although they don’t need the larger image, a by-product of enlargement is that less information appears on the screen at one time. For some students with learning and cognitive disabilities, a computer display packed with information can be overwhelming, so simplifying it increases their ability to read and learn the content. The software will also highlight the word being spoken by the synthesized voice. This provides dual sensory input for the user, reinforcing learning and helping the user to focus on the content.

At a university in Wisconsin, Dick was a student whose poor sight required him to wear strong glasses to read. But as his sight further degraded, the glasses no longer worked well enough. With the aid of screen magnification software Dick was able to do his assignments through the computer, which enabled him to finish his college degree.

Dick had a work study job training students with disabilities on assistive technology. Lora, one of his students, had dyslexia and struggled to keep up with all the reading required for her courses. Screen magnification helped her to better decode the text and understand the lessons. Having the text that was being spoken highlighted made it easier for her to concentrate.

Screen Readers

Screen reading software uses synthetic speech to tell the user (usually someone who is blind) what is on the monitor and to confirm that the key is being pressed when writing. This enables the student to both write and proofread class assignments. Universities are now providing books in electronic format, which is accessible to this software, thus enabling the student to work independently whenever it is convenient.

Screen reader software essentially looks at the document displayed on the computer monitor, hunting for anything that is coded as text. In simple terms, when it locates text, it uses a complex logarithm to come up with the sounds for each letter. Next it looks for any further language rules that modify what sound it should make. For example, it has rules telling how to pronounce the letters “ough” in different ways for the words bough, cough, dough, rough, and others.

John was a successful science professor at a major university when, due to a rare condition, he lost vision in both eyes in a very short time. Instead of surrendering his dreams and hopes, he learned about the assistive technologies that could enable him to continue functioning as a professional. The computer was already a basic tool he used in his work, and he quickly became a proficient screen reader user. Not only did he continue university teaching, but John also became the principal investigator on several grants from the National Science Foundation.

Audio Transcriptions and Video Captioning

Transcriptions of audio content such as subtitles and closed captioning for video existed long before these media became digitized. The change to digital media has made creating both audio and video easier and less expensive. A production team and studio are no longer required, so captions are becoming more common while the need is increasing. Recorded audio of class lectures is common, and it is necessary to have transcriptions available for any students who cannot hear that recording. Captioning and audio transcriptions are required by various pieces of legislation that mandate equal education for students with disabilities. A video, even if it is of high quality and very informative, is almost useless for anyone who is deaf and therefore misses all of the verbal content. The same is true of an audio recording. It has no value for someone who is deaf. When there are captions and transcriptions, these students can acquire the information and can learn the content as do other students.

After losing her hearing as a young adult, Mary attended the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Because her ability to read American Sign Language was still poor, Mary struggled to follow class lectures. However, she registered for an online course that used captioned videos and an asynchronous, online text discussion. Mary says that the mix of captioned videos and a text discussion for class participation made this her most meaningful college course.

When information is digitized, people with the difficulties like those described above are able to access information independently. Although people with such disabilities have long succeeded in schools and universities without the benefit of these leveling tools, they also had to spend time and energy overcoming cumbersome hurdles to obtain their education. Many have gone on to succeed in professional careers while still facing these barriers every day. Now their world is opening with fresh opportunities and exciting new independence.

UNIVERSAL DESIGN AND ONLINE LEARNING

On October 28, 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office submitted a report to the Committee on Education and Labor of the House of Representatives entitled “Higher Education and Disability: Education Needs a Coordinated Approach to Improve Its Assistance to Schools in Supporting Students” (U.S. GAO report GAO-10-3, 2009). The report noted that schools are increasingly using the universal design model in curriculum development and delivery. In this context, online learning is one of the many delivery platforms benefiting from the inclusion of universal design.

What Is Universal Design?

Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.

—Ronald Mace (Center for Universal Design, 2008)

Mace earned a degree in architecture from North Carolina State University in 1966, where, as a wheelchair user, he encountered many barriers. He believed that instead of modifying specific facilities to meet the needs of certain users, all facilities should be designed to accommodate as broad a population as possible (Center for Universal Design, 2008). The goal of universal design when applied to education is to make learning inclusive for all students, not just those with disabilities. It is an approach to designing all products and services to be usable by students with the widest possible range of both functional (physical) capabilities and different learning styles.

Seven Principles of Universal Design

The following general principles were developed by the Center for Universal Design and have become widely recognized as a summary of the vision of the universal design movement. The list below is based on version 1.0 of the principles, dated April 1997. The Center’s Web site has a wealth of universal design resources and can be found at www.design.ncsu.edu/cud.

1. Equitable use—The design should be appealing, useful, and marketable to people with diverse abilities rather than being targeted at a specific segment of the population.

2. Flexibility in use—The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. It should accommodate right- and left-handed people and let the user work at his or her own pace.

3. Simple and intuitive—Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level. It should also provide effective prompting and feedback during and after task completion.

4. Perceptible information—The design should communicate necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities. One way to do this is to use different modes (pictorial, verbal, tactile) for redundant presentation of essential information and provide adequate contrast between essential information and its surroundings.

5. Tolerance for error—The design should minimize the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. The design should provide warnings of possible errors and provide fail-safe features.

6. Low physical eff...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Figures
• PREFACE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• chapter ONE - Creating a Level Learning Space
• chapter TWO - Online Learning and Students with Disabilities
• chapter THREE - Creating Accessible Content in Word and Excel
• chapter FOUR - Creating Accessible Presentations with PowerPoint
• chapter FIVE - Delivering Accessible Content
• chapter SIX - Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
• chapter SEVEN - Making Multimedia Accessible
• chapter EIGHT - Supporting Accessible Online Learning
• APPENDIX A: SECTION 508 WEB STANDARDS
• APPENDIX B: WEBAIM SUMMARY OF W3C WAI WCAG 2
• APPENDIX C: AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND’S DISTANCE LEARNING SURVEY
• REFERENCES
• RESOURCES
• INDEX