RSS Feed for the unit Accessibility of eLearning

Introduction

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Accessibility for disabled students is a topic which could be included in any area of the curriculum. Most education professionals are aware that they should consider it, but are unsure of what it means, the implications for their role and where to get information. This unit addresses that need.

This unit is an adapted extract from the Open University course Innovations in elearning (H807)

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Learning outcomes

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

By the end of this unit you should:

be able to discuss the main challenges facing disabled students in eLearning;
have an understanding of the types of technology used by disabled students;
be able to consider what adjustments you might make in your own role;
be able to discuss disability and adjustments with colleagues involved in putting teaching into a virtual learning environment.

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1.1 Why include accessibility in innovation?

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

In countries where the use of computers and the web in daily life is widespread, many disabled people now have better and more independent access to information and communication. New technology developments can make this access easier, but they can also raise new barriers. These barriers can often be removed by considering the needs of disabled users when designing and implementing computer interfaces. This is what we are talking about when we use the term ‘accessibility’.

As common technical and physical barriers are removed, or at least lowered, people are turning towards designing courses so that students with the widest range of abilities and social circumstances can participate successsfully.

These are the ideas that we are talking about when we use the term ‘accessibility’.

We have included accessibility in this unit because the needs of disabled students have to be taken into account when considering how to deliver and support distance teaching. If you are already doing this in your own work, these activities may provide some additional resources. If not, the activities will help you to start to do so. The material in the activity topics begins with the basics about disability because it is very difficult to discuss accessibility without talking about disability.

Experience has shown us that it is better to consider accessibility at the beginning as well as throughout a process. It is often much more difficult to incorporate accessibility after a complex product has been completed and may be very expensive to achieve.

Leaving aside the technology for a moment, what we are really concerned with is access to the teaching and learning, not just access to using a computer. As you start to look at making adjustments to course materials, questions are raised about the effect of this on the intended learning outcomes of the course or the course component in question.

For example, if you provide a description of an illustration, will the description enable a blind student to think about the subject to the same extent as a student who can see it? And in the context of the course, is this important?

Educational professionals need to be aware of the need to make appropriate adjustments to support accessibility and it is a teacher's responsibility to make any decisions that affect the academic content. We will go into more detail about this later in the course.

As the use of information technology and web-based applications in distance teaching has increased, response to the needs of disabled students can no longer be seen as something that can be fixed bit by bit when individual students request it. In many countries legislation exists that requires all sectors to take steps to ensure that disabled people are not excluded. This applies to education too.

Information and communication technology that has been available for a few years will have been used by disabled people and the accessibility issues will already be known. The accessibility of an innovative technology can be predicted and tested, although its success or otherwise will not be truly known until significant numbers of disabled students try to use the technology.

In this unit we set out the motivating factors for including accessibility in the design and presentation of online learning. We ask you to consider what you already know about disability from your own experience and to begin to create a list of study activities that may be challenging for disabled students. You will build on this in the other activities presented in this unit.

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1.2 Considering disabled people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Disabled people were among the early adopters of personal computers. They were quick to appreciate that word processing programs and printers gave them freedom from dependence on others to read and write for them. Some became very knowledgeable about what could be achieved and used their knowledge to become independent students at a high level. They also gained the confidence to ask that providers of education make adjustments so that disabled students could make better use of course software and the web, rather than just word processing.

For some disability groups, information in electronic format (whether computer-based or internet-based) can be more accessible than printed information. For example, people who have limited mobility or limited manual skills can find it difficult to obtain or hold printed material; visually impaired people can find it difficult or impossible to read print, but both these groups can be enabled to use a computer and, therefore, access the information electronically.

Online communication can enable disabled students to communicate with their peers on an equal basis. For example, a deaf student may find it difficult to interact in a face-to-face tutorial, but have no difficulty interacting when using a text conferencing system in which everyone types and reads text. In addition, people's disabilities are not necessarily visible in online communication systems; so disabled people do not have to declare their disability and are not perceived as being different.

The demand from disabled students may be sufficient justification for meeting their needs, but there are three main factors that motivate educators to consider the needs of disabled people in course design.

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1.2.1 Ethics

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

The first factor is ethics. Disabled people should not be excluded from using any product, device or service if it is at all possible to avoid this: disabled people have the same rights as non-disabled people to access goods and services. Teachers generally try to write material that reflects the experiences of women, as well as men and those of people from diverse backgrounds, to make a course inclusive and ‘pedagogically accessible’. This good practice should be extended to include reflecting the experiences of disabled people and ensuring that there are no barriers to their participation in the course.

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1.2.2 Usability

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

The second factor is good practice. In general terms, and business terms, it is good practice to make a product available to as wide a market as possible. A design that incorporates the requirements for disabled students is likely to be more accessible and useful for non-disabled students than a design without such consideration. One example would be a user interface that is usable by a blind person will also be usable by a person whose eyes are busy (for example people who are doing a task that requires visual concentration, such as driving a vehicle, or operating machinery, such as a crane) or who cannot interact visually because they are using a service via the telephone. Another example is a user interface that is usable by someone who cannot use their hands will also be usable by a person whose hands are busy or currently not available (for example people who are carrying something, such as shopping or a child, who need to use a swipecard, or controlling many aspects of a device, such as flying an aeroplane).

There are some instances of conflict between the needs of disability groups. For example, the bumpy paving stones used in the UK to indicate a road crossing place to blind people can cause difficulties for people who are infirm. Bohman (2003) describes the perceived conflict between the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and the needs of visually impaired people. The former group can find textual information challenging and may prefer pictorial representations, whereas the latter group cannot see pictures and require textual information. However, Bohman argues that a website designed for cognitively disabled people can be made accessible to visually impaired people by the provision of text alternatives to the graphics. There are, therefore, some limitations to the concept of ‘one size fits all’ but in most cases the needs of most people can be catered for without causing difficulties for other groups.

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1.2.3 Legal requirements

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

The third factor is legal obligation. In many countries it is unlawful to discriminate against disabled people as employees, as students, and as consumers of goods and services. Legislation requires employers, education establishments, and providers of goods and services to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to avoid discriminating against disabled people.

In practice this means that, where ‘reasonable’, websites, software, buildings and other entities involved in employment, education or other services need to be made accessible. Many countries have extended this to require that the needs of disabled people should be anticipated thus providing access beforehand, not waiting until a disabled person asks for it. This means that a provider of a service cannot justify not making an adjustment by saying that they do not have any disabled customers; they need to anticipate that they may have disabled customers in the future.

Most government websites have links to legislation; we have listed some resources in the reference section.

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1.3 Disability facts and figures

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

There are many sources on the web that have disability statistics. We found the following at CSR Europe.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are 610 million disabled people worldwide.
Four hundred million disabled people live in the world's developing countries
Disability is estimated to affect 10 per cent to 20 per cent of every country's population, a percentage that is expected to grow because of poor health care and nutrition early in life, growing elderly populations and violent civil conflicts.
39 million disabled people in Europe.
8.6 million people (aged 16 and over) self declare as disabled UK (15 per cent of the UK population).
Only 8 per cent of disabled people in the UK use a wheelchair.

(CSR Europe, ‘Disability: facts and figures’ (Accessed 30 July 2007))
The Open University (OU) has a long history of encouraging and supporting disabled students. In 2004, The OU had 10,348 students who declared a disability. The figures for the different categories collected in September 2006 are shown in the table following. The last column gives the number as a percentage of the 9,782 students. (Both columns add up to more than 9,782 and 100 per cent as many students have more than one disability.)

Category	OU numbers	OU%
Mobility/Physical	3253	33.0
Mental health	2598	27.0
Dyslexia	1930	20.0
Visual impairment	1090	11.0
Hearing	783	8.0
Personal care	796	8.0
Fatigue/Pain	4550	47.0
Manual	2117	22.0
Speech	364	3.0
Unseen disability	351	4.0
Autistic spectrum	29	0.3
Other	2226	23.0
Total students	9,782

Source: Unpublished figures from the OU Disabled Student Services

The OU data are slightly different to the national figures for all disabled higher education students in the UK. The most recently available national figures are for 2004 and are given in the table below.

Category	All HE Numbers	All HE %
Mobility/Physical	4930	4
Mental health	5270	4
Dyslexia	49945	41
Visual impairment	3405	3
Hearing	6120	5
Personal care	260	under 1
An unseen disability	24340	20
Multiple disabilities	11965	10
Other	14840	12
Total students	121080

Source: National Disability Team website (Accessed 30 July 2007)

Question

What are the two main differences between the sets of data and what do you think might be the reasons for this?

Answer

The OU has relatively fewer students with dyslexia. This may be because most distance teaching uses the written word as the main form of communication.

The OU has more students affected by impaired mobility and by fatigue or pain. This may be because this is more easily managed at home or students are unable to travel.

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1.4 Activity task 1: list of challenging activities

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Drawing on your own experience and your study of this unit so far, write a list of activities that might be expected of a student on a course that has online and distance components.

Which of the activities on your list do you think might be challenging for disabled students?

Are there any activities in your list that might be easier for disabled students to do online rather than by traditional methods?

Save your list of the challenging activities so that you can add to it as you go through the other activities in the accessibility sections of this unit. We will ask you to post your list in your Learning Journal, or on the Unit Forum after you have completed ‘Discussing disability’.

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1.5.1 Disability legislation and policy

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Action on Access: the national co-ordination team for widening participation in higher education

Action on Access

Asia and Pacific Journal on Disability

www.drc-gb.org

European Blind Union, ‘Professional integration of blind people in France’

www.direct.gov.uk/ DisabledPeople/ fs/ en

United Nations, ‘Overview of international legal frameworks for disability legislation’

www.un.org/ esa/ socdev/ enable/ disovlf.htm

US Department of Justice, ‘A guide to disability rights laws’

www.usdoj.gov/ crt/ ada/ cguide.htm

US Government – Americans with Disabilities website

www.ada.gov

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1.5.2 Disability statistics

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

United Nations Statistics Division, ‘Human functioning and disability’

USA National Center for Health Statistics, Surveys and data collection systems

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1.5.3 Miscellaneous

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

The Disabled People's Association, Singapore

www.dpa.org.sg/

Remploy website

www.remploy.co.uk/

World Health Organization, ‘Disabilities’

World Health Organisation

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1.5.4 References

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

CSR Europe (undated) ‘Disability: facts and figures’ [online], Brussels, CSR Europe, www.csreurope.org/ csrinfo/ csrdisability/ DisabilityFactsandfigures/ (Accessed 14 August 2007).

National Disability Team (2000–2005) ‘Statistics – On Course’, Chelmsford, National Disability Team, (Accessed 14 August 2007).

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2.1 Models of disability

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Disability is discussed more frequently now than it was even a single generation ago. You may have come across ‘political correctness’ debates in the media in which the terms used to describe diverse groups of people are discussed.

In this short activity, we ask you to read about models of disability and guidance on terminology. You will also be asked to revisit your list of challenging activities from the ‘Accessibility and disability’ activity and to update it if necessary.

This activity will increase your confidence in using generally acceptable language, both in your study and in your application of accessibility in teaching.

When discussing disability it is useful to be aware of the following.

There is a body of literature relating to the status of disabled people in society.
There are two central models of disability: the social model and the medical model.
The DEMOS website provides definitions from Michael Oliver, a researcher, writer and campaigner.

The definition of the medical (or individual) model …

… locates the ‘problem’ of disability within the individual and … sees the causes of this problem as stemming from the functional limitations or psychological losses which are assumed to arise from disability.
(Oliver, 1990)

In the medical model the barriers exist because of people's impairments. In contrast, the social model describes disability as …

… all the things that impose restrictions on disabled people; ranging from individual prejudice to institutional discrimination, from inaccessible public buildings to unusable transport systems, from segregated education to excluding work arrangements, and so on.
(Oliver, 1990)

In other words it is society that disables people with impairments. The social model was developed in the context of disabled people campaigning for change in societal attitudes. The model focuses on the need for society to change policy and attitudes as well as eliminate economic discrimination against disabled people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) commissioned a classification system for disability, International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH) (Wood, 1980). Below are the definitions that were developed.

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2.1.1 Impairment

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function.

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2.1.2 Disability

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being.

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2.1.3 Handicap

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

A disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or disability, that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role that is normal (depending on age, sex and social and cultural factors) for that individual.

If you are interested in political aspects of disability awareness, the DEMOS ‘Disability Awareness’ module is a good place to start. This topic also studied in two OU courses: K222 Care, Welfare and Community for Social Workers and D218 Social Policy: Welfare, Power and Diversity.

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2.2 Defining disability

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

So, what do we mean by the term ‘disability’? The Open University doesn't define the term, but offers services to any person with ‘a disability, health problem, mental-health difficulty or specific learning difficulty (such as dyslexia) that affects their ability to study’ (Open to Your Needs booklet, pdf file, 2005).

In the UK the main legislation used to improve the treatment of disabled people and to manage resources is the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

The DDA sets out the circumstances under which a person is ‘disabled’. A person is considered to be disabled if:

they have a mental or physical impairment
the impairment has an adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities
the adverse effect is substantial and long-term (meaning it has lasted for 12 months, or is likely to last for more than 12 months or for the rest of their life).

In defining ‘normal day-to-day activities’ the DDA states that at least one of the following areas must be badly affected:

mobility
manual dexterity
physical co-ordination
continence
ability to lift, carry or move everyday objects
speech, hearing or eyesight
memory or ability to concentrate, learn or understand
understanding of the risk of physical danger.

The Disability Rights Commission launched a consultation about the definition of disability, which can be found on the Disability Rights Commission website.

There are other definitions used by other governments and agencies.

Question

Look again at the definitions of disability in the Disability Discrimination Act and the World Health Organization examples.

Are their definitions of disability examples of medical or social models?

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2.3 Disability-related terminology

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

You may already be aware that the influence of the social model of disability has resulted in a change in the terminology used in relation to disability. Some terms are discouraged because they reflect the medical model's view that the ‘problems’ associated with disability stem from functional limitations. This can lead to hesitation when discussing disability for fear of causing offence. The preferred terms reflect the view of the social model that it is society that disables people with impairments.

DEMOS usefully summarises the importance of the terminology and some of the difficulties associated with it.

The language we use to talk about disability plays an extremely important part in the way society views disabled people. This is often a confusing area since people who are not disabled themselves feel worried about offending one particular group of people by using the wrong term and the terminology adopted by disabled people often changes.

There is not universal agreement on how to describe disabled people since disabled people themselves often disagree on the ‘best’ term.

(DEMOS, ‘Disability awareness terminology’ (Accessed 17 August 2007))

A web search on ‘political correctness’ revealed many viewpoints on using acceptable terminology. The views expressed ranged from heated arguments across many forums to a short article at the UK Channel 4 Television website. They confirm the view in the DEMOS quote that disabled people disagree about how to describe disability in the same way as non-disabled people.

Different cultures may have different views on what is acceptable. Table 1 reflects the standards that we used as guidance when writing the accessibility activities.

Table 1 Discouraged and preferred disability-related terms

Discouraged term	Rationale	Preferred term
The disabled	There is no such thing as the disabled; lumping everyone together in this way is felt by many to take away their individuality.	Disabled people
The blind	As above.	Visually impaired people Blind people
People with disabilities	Implies the disability ‘belongs’ to the disabled person.	Disabled people
Handicapped Cripple	Conjures images of disabled people begging or being ‘cap in hand’.	Disabled person
Invalid	Literally means not valid.	Disabled person
Able bodied	Suggests that all disabilities are physical and ignores unseen disabilities, and that disabled people are not able.	Non-disabled
Afflicted with… Victim of… Crippled by …	Conveys a tragic or negative view about disability.	Has … [condition]
Suffering from	Confuses disability with illness and also implies that a disability may be a personal burden.	Has … [condition]
Wheelchair bound	People are not tied into their wheelchairs. A wheelchair offers the freedom to move around and is a valuable tool.	Wheelchair user
Deaf and dumb	Phrase is demeaning and inaccurate; many deaf people use sign language to communicate and dumb implies that someone is stupid.	Hearing impaired person Hard of hearing person Deaf person Sign language user

Source: ‘Disabled people and terminology’, Manchester City Council website (Accessed 30 July 2007)

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2.4 Activity task 2

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Return to your list of challenging activities that you created in ‘Accessibility and disability’. In the light of your reading would you change the way that you have expressed your ideas?

You might like to use the unit forum to post your list and comment on other people's lists.

Discuss the similarities and differences between the language and terminology you have each used. Try to find evidence on websites written by disabled people to reinforce your arguments.

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2.5 Resources

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Barnes, C. (1992) Disabling Imagery and the Media, The British Council of Organisations of Disabled People, Halifax, Ryburn Publishing.

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2.5.1 References

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Channel 4 (undated) ‘Watch your language’ [online], London, Channel 4 Television, www.channel4.com/ life/ microsites/ B/ bornfreak/ language.htm (Accessed 31 July 2007).

DEMOS (2003) website http://jarmin.com/demos/.

DEMOS (2002) ‘Disability Awareness’ module [online], Manchester, DEMOS Project, http://jarmin.com/ demos/ course/ awareness/ 06.html (Accessed 31 July 2007).

DEMOS (2002) ‘Disability awareness terminology’ [online], Manchester, DEMOS Project, http://jarmin.com/ demos/ course/ awareness/ 08.html (Accessed 31 July 2007).

Disability Rights Commission (2006) Definition of disability consultation document www.drc.org.uk/ newsroom/ news_releases/ 2006/ consultation_on_definition_of.aspx (Accessed 31 July 2007).

Oliver, M. (1990) The Politics of Disablement, Basingstoke, Macmillan.

The Open University (2005) Open to Your Needs, Milton Keynes, The Open University; also available online at www3.open.ac.uk/ our-student-policies/ pdf/ disability.pdf (Accessed 31 July 2007).

Wood, P. (1980) International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH), Geneva, World Health Organization.

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3.1 Computers and assistive technology

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

In this activity on accessibility and assistive technology we consider the technological adaptations used by people with different disabilities. In order to understand the adjustments that are needed to make online learning accessible, it is important for you to know what tools disabled students are likely to be using.

In subsequent sections we will look in detail at adjustments that may need to be made but in the meantime, although this is a long activity, we would like you to do as many of the interactive options as you can, as they illustrate the time effort required by successful disabled students. You will then need to expand your list of challenging activities to include possible solutions.

It is a fact of life that even in the most carefully designed course, not all students engage with the material in the same way. This may be because of differences in learning styles or it may be because of a disability or dyslexia. Different aspects of a course will be challenging for different groups of people. Some students may find it impossible to attend a face-to-face activity while for others reading and writing may be very difficult.

Many disabled people use a personal computer with a wide range of adaptations, which are called assistive or enabling devices or technology. Even very severely disabled people can use computers to read and write without help. This gives students greater independence and also a degree of privacy that is not possible if they are relying totally on human helpers. When the assistive technology is combined with online communication, some barriers caused by other people's reactions to disability are also removed.

The benefits of the technology can be negated by poorly designed interfaces provided for the various components of an online course. This will be discussed in more detail in Sections 4 and 5.

Sophisticated assistive technology can be expensive and students who need it may have to go through a long process of applying for financial awards, getting equipment in place and learning how to use it, all before they begin a course. The technology can also be complicated and, as with any group of users, not all students will learn to use all the advanced features.

Questions

What sources of advice or financial help are available to disabled students in your country?

If there is financial help, what can it be used for?

If you work in a teaching establishment, what help is available for disabled students?

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3.2 Mobile accessibilty

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

A few mobile devices have accessibility features and there are some specialist computers designed with a disabled-only accessible interface; for example a portable computer with Braille-only input and output. We will concentrate on the most widely used products: that is software and hardware added to a PC, most often using a Windows platform.

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3.2.1 Assistive technology

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

We have arranged the information in the following sections by considering the main groups of disability and the technology that they use, although some students may use more than one assistive device and the same assistive device may be used by students with different disabilities.

It is important to note here that the descriptions in the following sections are rather general and this hides the wide diversity of impairments, abilities and experiences of disabled people. Grouping the categories as we do here, in order to understand the effects on studying, doesn't imply that people with each type of disability can be neatly divided into groups of ability.

You should keep the following points in mind while studying the following descriptions.

A disabled person will have many abilities that are unaffected by the impairment.
Disabled people are as diverse as the population they are part of in terms of their preferences, attitudes, etc.
Impairments vary in their severity, between people and over time.
It is fairly common for a person to have more than one disability.
People's needs and abilities change in relation to specific tasks.
Students studying at this unit may have a disability.

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3.3 Visual impairment

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

There are approximately two million people in the UK who have a sight problem. The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) defines someone as having a sight problem if they are unable to recognise someone across the road or they have difficulty reading newsprint even when wearing glasses (RNIB, 2005, ‘About sight loss – changing the way we think about blindness’).

When discussing visually impaired people it is important to distinguish between partially sighted people (also known as people with low vision) and people with no useful vision (blind people). This distinction is important because these two groups interact with information and devices in very different ways.

Visual impairments can be caused by many different conditions. Some conditions are associated with aging, while others are congenital (present at birth). Different visual impairments have different effects on the person's vision: some impairments cause increased sensitivity to light; others result in a restricted or partially occluded field of view, such as lack of central vision or tunnel vision. Other conditions cause rapid and uncontrollable eye movements, which make it difficult to see clearly.

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3.3.1 Colour-blindness

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

People who are colour-blind cannot distinguish between certain ranges of colour. The most common form is red-green colour-blindness. People with red-green colourblindness do not see these colours in the same way as most people do, and cannot distinguish between them. Approximately 1 in 10 men and 1 in 200 women are affected by red-green colour-blindness. Colour-blindness is either inherited or is caused by an underlying eye condition, such as macular degeneration (BBC, 2005, ‘Men's health’ ).

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3.3.2 Access to PC output for blind people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Blind people access computers using a combination of software and hardware that present the visual contents of the screen in another form, either in synthesised speech or in Braille. A piece of software known as a screen reader directs the information that is sent to the screen to either a speech synthesiser or a refreshable Braille display.

To hear the above paragraph read out by a synthesiser, click on the audio clip below.

Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.

View document

Transcript

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3.3.3 Screen readers and speech synthesisers

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

A screen reader monitors the information sent from the computer to the screen. It makes decisions about which part of the screen to read and in what order, then passes this information to either a speech synthesiser or a Braille display. All screen readers support speech synthesisers and most support Braille displays.

The first speech synthesisers were hardware, usually a small box that sat on the desktop and had its own speaker, or a card that fitted inside the computer and used external speakers or those of the computer. These speech synthesisers are still in use, but it is now more common to use a software synthesiser, which generates audio output that is played by the computer's own sound system.

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3.3.4 Screen readers and speech synthesisers

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

A refreshable Braille display is a row of cells each containing pins that represent Braille dots. These pins are raised or lowered to form Braille letters. The screen reader program sends text a line at a time or as set by the user. The hardware is expensive, a 40 character display costs about £4000 ($7000, €6000); so this option is most often used by those in employment. Its main advantage over speech output is that refreshable Braille distinguishes between individual characters, so there is no confusion over homophones such as ‘tale’ and ‘tail’. See the Refreshable Braille Displays website for more details.

The main advantage of using a speech synthesiser with a screen reader rather than reading a Braille display is that synthesisers are cheaper and information is absorbed faster than by reading Braille. The speed of speech output can be varied and experienced users can listen at the same rate as a person reads print silently.

There are several difficulties associated with using a screen reader and speech synthesiser or Braille display to access a computer. The main one is that it is very difficult to obtain a quick overview of the information on the screen because it is presented in a ‘linear’ manner. In other words, the contents of the screen are read out word by word and there is no equivalent of the visual glance. This linear approach also means that it takes much longer to read a screen-full of text using synthesised speech. In addition, synthesised speech can be very tiring to listen to over a long period of time, more so than human speech.

As well as presenting the information on the screen, screen readers also provide additional functionality to allow the user to interact with the information. For example, screen readers have commands for pausing or repeating the speech, and echoing back keyboard input. Screen readers often have two modes: one for reviewing information, for example continuous reading, which can automatically scroll down when the bottom of a screen is reached; and another for interacting with the information, for example editing text or filling in web forms.

When a screen reader is used with a speech synthesiser the user can control the amount of information that is read; for example a paragraph, a line, a word or a character at a time. The user can also move the focus backwards and forwards in the text, control the rate and pitch of the speech, and may be able to choose between different voices.

A list of some of the screen readers currently available is provided on the Resources page at the end of this unit. Navigate there using the 'jump to' facility in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

If you are unfamiliar with screen readers do ‘Activity task 3: using a screen reader’.

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3.3.5 PC input by blind people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

To input to the computer blind people can touch-type using a standard keyboard but can't use a mouse because this requires hand-eye coordination. Although it is possible to emulate mouse actions using the keyboard, it can be difficult to locate its position on the screen reliably. It is possible to use most Microsoft applications under the Windows platform without using the mouse at all by using keyboard shortcuts. The Help files of Microsoft applications and Windows provide lists of available keyboard shortcuts. There is an activity about this in the section ‘Physical impairments’.

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3.4 Activity task 3: using a screen reader

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If you are already familiar with screen readers you can skip this activity.

A simulation that demonstrates how a web page might be read by a screen reader and speech synthesiser is available on the Web AIM site.

This site contains an audio file of a screen reader reading a website that has been designed with some common accessibility errors. It also provides a visual version of the site.

The simulation requires the Shockwave plug-in. If you do not have this plug-in on your computer the website will prompt you to install it. Altenatively you may wish to download and install it now from www.adobe.com/ shockwave/ download/. Shockwave is also required for Activity 4.

Run the simulation and try to answer the three questions provided on the simulation page under the heading ‘Tasks’. To make the simulation easier to understand try pressing ‘c’ to make captions appear, and pressing ‘i’ to see a screenshot of the page that is being read out.

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3.5 Access for partially sighted people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Partial sight is caused by a variety of eye conditions, which affect vision in different ways. This means that partially sighted people have a range of different needs for accessing the output of a computer.

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3.5.1 Colours and fonts

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Partially sighted people may require particular computer display settings to optimise their ability to see the screen. For example, some people find that particular colour combinations for text and background are easier to see. A common preferred combination is yellow text on a black background. Some people may prefer certain font styles, such as sans serif fonts, or may need larger font sizes in order to read text. Such people may change the default font or increase the font size via operating system settings.

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3.5.2 Magnification

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Some people who require large fonts, or who need to enlarge pictures or icons, may use a software magnifier. A basic magnifier is available within operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS. More sophisticated software magnifiers are also available, which provide additional functionality, such as the following:

Magnification of the whole screen (see picture below)

Magnification of the area around the mouse cursor (like an on-screen magnifying glass) (see picture below)

Magnification of half of the screen (vertical or horizontal split) (see picture below)

Colour settings applied to everything on screen (see picture below)

Speech output, which reads everything on the screen in synthesised speech

Partially sighted people may use a combination of any or all of the above settings and programs, depending on their particular circumstances or the task they are performing.

It is important to understand that when the screen, or a portion of the screen, is magnified a smaller proportion of the screen can be seen at one time. This will have an impact on tasks that require the user to monitor or look at different parts of the screen at the same time. For example, a user with unimpaired sight who is loading a web page can easily glance at the browser status bar to monitor the loading progress. In contrast, someone using a screen magnifier will have to move the magnified area to the status bar to read it, and then return the magnifier to the top of the screen to start reading the page.

As mentioned above, screen magnifying software can provide speech output. This can help to overcome the difficulty described above of needing to look at, or monitor, different parts of the screen.

A list of some of the screen magnifiers currently available is provided on the Resources page at the end of this section. Navigate there using the 'jump to' facility in the navigation bar at the top of this page.

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3.5.3 PC input by partially sighted people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Partially sighted people can learn to touch-type as sighted people do. However, this can be a difficult process if you cannot see the screen or the keyboard clearly. A simple, low-tech solution to make the keyboard more visible is the use of large print labels, which can be attached to the keys. Alternatively, a high contrast keyboard can be used; for example a black keyboard with black keys with yellow characters. In addition, speech output software can announce every key that is pressed so that the user can receive feedback as they type. Partially sighted people may use a mouse as well as the keyboard, depending on their level of vision.

Now do ‘Activity task 4: simulating visual impairments’ on the next page.

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3.6 Activity task 4: simulating visual impairments

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

From the WebAIM website run the simulation that demonstrates how a web page looks to people with a range of visual impairments (macular degeneration, cataract, glaucoma) and the effects of screen magnification.

The simulation requires the Shockwave plug-in that was also used in Activity 3. If you do not have this plug-in on your computer the website will prompt you to install it. Altenatively, you may wish to download and install it now from www.adobe.com/ shockwave/ download/.

First read the instructions, and then start the simulation. Try out some of the different settings under ‘Vision type’, and change the ‘Zoom’ settings. Try some of the activities that appear under ‘Task’.

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3.7 Deafness

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) estimate that there are approximately 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK (approximately 698,000 of these are severely or profoundly deaf) and this number is rising as the number of people over 60 increases. The RNID also states that approximately 450,000 severely or profoundly deaf people cannot hear well enough to use a voice telephone, even when using equipment to amplify the sound (RNID, 2005, ‘Facts and figures about deafness’).

When discussing deafness it is important to distinguish between people with severe (or profound) deafness and people who are hard of hearing. Profoundly deaf people do not generally use hearing aids as they provide no benefit. Some hard of hearing people use hearing aids to reduce the effects of the impairment. Hearing aids can allow people to access sound, but the sound is unlikely to be of the same quality as can be heard with unimpaired hearing.

Some deaf people use Sign Language as their primary, or only, language and may not read or write English (or other spoken languages). Sign languages differ from country to country, even those that use the same spoken language; for example British Sign Language (BSL) is different from American Sign Language (ASL).

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3.7.1 Deafblindness

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

There are about 23,000 deafblind people in the UK. Some are totally deaf and totally blind, while others have some hearing and/or some vision (RNID, 2005, ‘Deafblind people’). Those who are totally blind may read Braille. Totally deafblind people may use the deafblind manual alphabet to communicate if they cannot hear or speak and cannot see sufficiently to use full sign language. The deafblind alphabet allows the ‘speaker’ to spell out words on the ‘listener's’ hand using specific movements.

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3.7.2 Use of computers by deaf or hard of hearing people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

In general, people who are deaf or hard of hearing do not require any specific assistive technology in order to use a computer effectively.

Deaf people can access visual output and can use a mouse.
Hearing aid users may connect their aid to the computer's speakers or an amplifier in order to hear audio output better.
Severely deaf people may change the computer's settings so that it provides alternatives to audio alerts etc. by using screen flashes.
People who have both visual and hearing impairments may use a refreshable Braille display or other Braille-based devices with a standard keyboard for input.

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3.8 Physical impairments

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

People may have a range of physical impairments caused by a wide variety of conditions. It is not necessary to discuss causes of these conditions, but it is useful to note the kind of impairments that people experience. For example, people may have:

tremor or shaking
weakness
pain
reduced control of limbs
inability to sit upright
short or missing limbs.

Physically impaired people may use mobility aids such as wheelchairs or crutches. They may have assistance from other people in daily life and may use a range of assistive devices to control the environment, to manipulate objects or carry out tasks.

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3.8.1 Use of computers by physically impaired people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

As described above, people may have a wide range of physical impairments, which differ in terms of the extent to which they impair computer use, indeed they may only need suitable furniture. The assistive technology used depends on the person's specific disability.

People who have limited use of their hands or arms, or have reduced control of fine movements, may use a variety of input devices that suit their specific requirements, such as adapted keyboards, mice, trackballs and joysticks etc. The range of pointing devices includes:

joystick (like those used for computer games)
trackball (like an upside down mouse)
touch pad (like those found on some laptop computers).

The range of keyboards includes:

single-handed keyboard (left- or right-handed)
differently shaped keyboard (e.g. curved shape)
different sized keyboards (large with large keys, or compact)
on-screen keyboard (operated via a switch, perhaps operated by a single movement).

Physically impaired people may also use operating system utilities to support their use of the keyboard. For example, Microsoft Sticky Keys utility supports users who cannot hold down one key while pressing another by allowing these keys to be pressed in succession rather than in parallel (so to type a capital letter the user can press shift and then the letter).

People who do not have arms or hands, or who cannot use their hands and/or arms, may use an intermediary device to operate a standard keyboard, such as a stick held in their mouth or attached to their head. People with physical disabilities can use a computer as long as they have control over at least one muscle in their body. There are assistive technologies that can translate any controlled movement (however fine or coarse) into computer input, either to select choices or enter text. This might be used to operate on-screen keyboard emulation software.

In addition, this group may also use voice recognition software both for text-entry and for controlling the computer. This type of software has certain functions that allow the user to issue spoken commands to perform mouse clicks. For example, the user could say the phrase ‘click play’ to operate the play button of a media player.

Of course, some physically impaired people may use a combination of different software and devices, such as a joystick instead of a mouse, for clicking and selecting, plus voice recognition software instead of a keyboard to enter text.

Wheelchair users may not have any problems with using a standard keyboard and mouse. The main access issue for this group is whether the computer desk is of a height that will accommodate the wheelchair and allow the person to get close enough to the desk to reach the keyboard and mouse. Wheelchairs vary in height, and people vary in height and reach; therefore height-adjustable desks are available that can adapt to suit different wheelchair users and their wheelchairs.

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3.9 Activity task 5: without a mouse

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If you never use a mouse, you can skip this activity.

If you have your usual document editor open, close it now.

Put your mouse where you can't reach it easily and continue using only the keyboard. If you get stuck, use the mouse but keep count of the number of times you use it and what for.

See if you can open the editor using the Windows keystrokes.

If you don't know where to start, here are the keystrokes. (These insructions are for a PC with Windows software. If you are not using Windows, check the relevant help files on your computer for keystrokes for opening applications, then put the mouse away.)

Press CTRL+ESC to display the Start menu.

If your program is visible in the program list, press the first letter of the program name to select it.

If not, press P to highlight Programs or All Programs. You may have to press it more than once if you have other programs that start with the same letter. Use the ARROW KEYS to navigate to your program.

When the name of your program is selected, press ENTER to open it.

Once it is open, if you don't start with a new document, use the menus to open one. Most editors have this option on the File menu.

Most menus can be activated using ALT with the first letter of the menu name, for example ALT/F. The relevant letter is usually underlined.

Type in a few sentences about anything you like. Correct any typing errors.

Go to the fourth word and highlight it. (Hint: hold down the SHIFT key and press the LEFT or RIGHT arrow keys.) Make it bold. (Control + B). Now undo that (Control +Z). Go to the start of the fifth word and highlight the next three words. Copy them (Control + C) then paste them (Control + V) at the end of the last sentence.

If you found that easy, try indenting the text or creating a table with five rows and three columns. You may need to consult the program's help files to find the keystrokes.

How did you get on? Many people regularly use the keyboard for most activities, but reach for the mouse occasionally as it is hard to remember all the keystrokes for less frequent activities. Were there any actions that you couldn't do at all?

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3.10 Dyslexia

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Dyslexia is sometimes referred to as a specific learning difficulty (SLD).
The British Dyslexia Association provides a useful description of dyslexia, its effects, and the numbers of people affected.
The word ‘dyslexia’ comes from the Greek and means ‘difficulty with words’. It is a difference in the brain area that deals with language. It affects the under-lying skills that are needed for learning to read, write and spell. Brain imaging techniques show that dyslexic people process information differently. Around 4% of the population is severely dyslexic. A further 6% have mild to moderate problems. Dyslexia occurs in people from all backgrounds and of all abilities, from people who cannot read to those with university degrees. Dyslexic people, of all ages, can learn effectively but often need a different approach.
(British Dyslexia Association, 2005, 'What is dyslexia?', (Accessed 31 July 2007))

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3.10.1 Use of computers by dyslexic people

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

In general, people with dyslexia may have difficulty reading, and may also have difficulty in composing and physically writing or typing their own work. This group can be supported by assistive technology for both input and output and they may use a range of software to assist them in reading and writing, depending on their particular needs. People who have difficulties with reading may use text-to-speech software that reads out text. For example, the screen readers used by visually impaired people, as described earlier, or other software, which may provide a visual indication as words are spoken so that the user can follow the voice.

People who have difficulty reading may also use software or operating system settings to change the presentation of the text. The type of presentation depends on the specific needs of the individual, but many find it useful to change the size, character spacing, line spacing and line length of text on the screen. Also different combinations of text and background colour can make text more readable.

People who have difficulty composing or writing text may use voice recognition software to dictate into the computer. Others may use word-prediction utilities to increase the ease and speed of composing text.

A list of tools that might be used by dyslexic people is provided in the Resources section.

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3.10.2 Other impairments

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

There are people with a wide range of other impairments that are not covered by the above groups, but which may affect study. Some examples are listed below.

People with diabetes may have reduced sensitivity in their hands.
People with many different conditions may experience severe pain, which makes it difficult for them to concentrate on a task.
People with mental illness may have a range of difficulties, including lack of engagement and concentration or difficulty communicating with others.
People can have a range of speech impairments.
Older people may have a range of conditions that restrict their movement or their ability to concentrate, or they may have memory problems.
People with fatigue may find it difficult to study without frequent breaks.

People may have variable conditions that allow them to study only at certain times of the day and people using medication could be affected by most of the above list.

As we said earlier some people have multiple impairments; for example, a wheelchair user may also be deaf or a visually impaired person may be dyslexic and have poor hearing. Older people in particular are likely to have multiple impairments. This may make it quite complicated to support a student with suitable equipment and services.

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3.10.3 Use of computers by people with other disabilities

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

People with other disabilities/conditions may have difficulties with using computers or other devices. Some examples are listed below.

People who have brain damage may have poor concentration or loss of short term memory. This may make it difficult for them to complete activities in a single session or to remember keystrokes or sequences of actions.
Mental health issues may result in lack of concentration or engagement.
People with diabetes may have reduced sensitivity in their fingertips.
People who cannot speak or have a severe speech impairment may not be able to use speech-operated applications or devices. People with mild speech impairment should be able to train voice recognition software to recognise their speech as long as their speech is consistent within certain limits.
Older people may have a range of sensory or physical impairments.

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3.11 Accessible content and alternatives

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Assistive technology can give access only to whatever is on the screen; it doesn't provide any alternative content, unless this is specifically added. For example, a screen reader cannot interpret visual content but it can read a description if one has been provided.

Multimedia content might need to be supplemented with the same content in other formats. Deaf students need transcripts of audio and for the audio track of video material. If the video is an interview, a simple transcript may be sufficient, otherwise it needs to be synchronised with the visual flow.

Visual material needs to be described for blind and partially sighted people. This includes any writing presented in an image format, such as a picture of a manuscript or a facsimile of a newspaper cutting. Guidelines for describing visual teaching material have been produced for the OU and are available at the OU Knowledge Network site.

Providing alternative content can take time and the best person to do it is the author of the material. They know what the intended learning outcome is and can judge what essential information needs to be conveyed.

Alternative content can be provided in various ways; for example a short description can be added as an ‘ALT’ tag in the code for an image on a web page. Most screen readers will read this out automatically. A longer description could be put on a separate page and linked from the figure caption. A transcript could be displayed automatically as audio is playing or links could be offered to one or the other.

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3.12 Activity task 6: solutions to challenging activities

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Return to your list of the challenging activities, which you updated in ‘Discussing disability’.

Add notes on possible solutions to as many of the challenges as you can.

You might like to share your ideas in the unit forum and discuss the similarities and differences.

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3.13.1 General

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

OU Knowledge Network, ‘Guidelines for describing visual teaching material’ http://kn.open.ac.uk/ public/ index.cfm?wpid=2709

US National Public Website on Assistive Technology

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3.13.2 Deafness

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Deafblind, ‘Refreshable Braille displays’

RNID, ‘Facts and figures about deafness’

RNID, ‘Deafblind people’ factsheet

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3.13.3 Dyslexia

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

British Dyslexia Association, ‘What is dyslexia?’

British Dyslexia Association, ‘Study skills’

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3.13.4 Sight impairment

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Deafblind, ‘Refreshable Braille displays’

RNIB, ‘About sight loss – changing the way we think about blindness.

RNIB, ‘Using a computer with low vision’ and RNIB, ‘Using a computer without vision’

RNID, ‘Deafblind people’ factsheet

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3.13.5 Simulations

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Simulation of magnification and certain visual impairments

WebAIM screen reader simulation

WebAIM visual impairment simulation

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3.13.6 Sources of funding for disabled students

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

UK Disabled Students' Allowances (DSAs)

Scotland Disabled Students' Allowances (DSAs)

European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education

StudentAid BC

ICDRI, USA

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3.13.7 Assistive technology software

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Screen magnification

Lunar from Dolphin Computer Access

SuperNova from Dolphin Computer Access

ZoomText from Ai Squared www.aisquared.com/ Products/ zoomtextmag/ index.cfm

Screen readers

Hal from Dolphin Computer Access

JAWS from Freedom Scientific

WindowEyes

Tools to support dyslexic people

ReadandWrite and Wordsmith

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3.14 References

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

BBC (2005) ‘Men's health’,, London, British Broadcasting Corporation (Accessed 31 July 2007).

British Dyslexia Association (2005) ‘What is dyslexia?’. Reading, British Dyslexia Association (Accessed 31 July 2007).

RNIB (2005) ‘About sight loss – changing the way we think about blindness’ [online], London, Royal National Institute of the Blind (Accessed 31 July 2007).

RNID (2005) ‘Facts and figures about deafness’, London, Royal National Institute for Deaf People (Accessed 31 July 2007).

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4.1 Adjustments for all

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

This activity on ‘Accessibility, pedagogy and reasonable adjustments’ discusses considering the needs of disabled students in terms of the concept of reasonable adjustments and the potential impact of a disability on achieving learning objectives. The activity asks you to consider some specific course scenarios and your responses to them. The subsequent activity, ‘Specifying, designing and evaluating accessibility’, goes on to look at design decisions in the development of accessible learning resources, and the evaluation of accessibility. The activity asks you to return to the scenarios from ‘Accessibility, pedagogy and reasonable adjustments’, and then to use two automated accessibility checking tools to check the accessibility of a web page.

Earlier in this unit you created a list of online course activities that might be challenging for disabled students and suggested some possible solutions. In ‘Accessibility, pedagogy and reasonable adjustments’ we look at challenging activities in the wider educational context and at some principles to consider when you are faced with making adjustments to your teaching delivery.

In Section 1 'Introducing accessibility and disability', we said ‘We have included accessibility in this course because the needs of disabled students have to be taken into account when considering how to deliver and support distance teaching.’ We also gave three motivating factors: ethics, usability and legal requirements.

In addition to the points made there, you might like to consider the effects of the increasing numbers of older students in higher education (see National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a part of the US Department of Education).

Many of the features of an accessible online learning system are helpful to older people who would not consider themselves disabled. Features that enable you to increase font sizes and to pause or slow down an activity are ones that many older students (and teachers) might relate to.

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4.1.1 Disability discrimination legislation

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

This activity uses the UK Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) Part 4 as the basis for discussing the concept of making reasonable adjustments. The DDA may not apply to you directly, but many countries have similar legislation. We feel the underlying principles of such legislation reflect the moral standpoint or the right thing to do, regardless of whether or not legislation exists.

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4.2 Pedagogy and reasonable adjustments

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

It has always been part of the OUs mission to make higher education available to all potential students, regardless of background or circumstance. To quote the OU mission statement: ‘It promotes educational opportunity and social justice by providing high-quality university education to all who wish to realise their ambitions and fulfil their potential.’

The DDA Part 4 makes it clear that education providers are responsible for:

anticipating that they will have disabled students
making reasonable adjustments to provide the same or equivalent opportunities to study.

This is a challenge to all institutions whether they deliver courses face to face or at a distance. Those of us who provide elearning courses or online course components face two more challenges:

Our students may apply two or more years after the design stage of the course. Some may have needs we have not encountered before and are, therefore, difficult to anticipate.
We have to make adjustments that will work outside the institution's physical boundaries. We may not know precisely what equipment a student is using or whether they have easy access to help with unexpected barriers. We often do not know whether they are new users or expert users of their assistive technology.

Institutions that have an open admissions policy have to acknowledge a further factor; prospective students may not have studied their chosen subject in a formal learning context since they became disabled.

This means that students may not have had help to develop study strategies appropriate to their disabilities and in their chosen subject area. For example, a visually impaired student who has been to a school with specialist teachers is likely to be familiar with a wide range of assistive technology and methods for producing coursework. A student with a similar disability who has not had this experience will need to learn new study techniques at the same time as embarking on a course.

All of these factors mean that forward planning, building in flexibility and allowing students to customise interfaces are the keys to making courses as inclusive as possible.

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4.3 Reasonable adjustments and responsibility

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

In completing the accessibility activities the first three sections of this unit, you should have gained an appreciation of the range of challenges that might be anticipated. As technology and assistive technology develop, some barriers may be removed only to be replaced by new ones. It's useful to understand the principles that form the basis of adjustments, rather than simply following guidelines. The learning environment is constantly changing, as are the tools and skills of disabled students. It's important to be confident that you can re-interpret the principles and be flexible in your response to these changes.

One principle should remain at the forefront of any discussion – the aim should be to provide access to the teaching, not necessarily to the technology. This is sometimes overlooked by software developers in their enthusiasm for technical fixes.

The concept of reasonable adjustments is common to many countries’ disability legislation. It allows for flexibility and dialogue between provider and disabled person and is gradually defined by codes of practice and case law. All members of an institution share responsibility for making adjustments and we take the view that the primary responsibility for access to the curriculum lies with those who design and deliver the teaching. Many of the decisions about adjustments depend on an understanding of the pedagogy that underpins the course: what is the intended learning outcome of a piece of work?

There are a number of actions it is reasonable to expect course providers to take and some that are not reasonable in some circumstances. These are discussed in the sections ‘What is reasonable?’ and ‘What is not reasonable?’

The DDA Part 4 Code of Practice, which accompanies the Act, provides some examples of reasonable and unreasonable adjustments. This document can be found on the Disability Rights Campaign website.

We take the view that even if all the elements of a course cannot be made accessible, it is important to make adjustments to those that can. For example, it may be impossible to describe very complicated diagrams effectively unless you can have a real-time conversation with the student. You may have to recommend that the student has help from a support worker for this. You should still supply descriptions for straightforward diagrams as this will reduce the student's dependence on others.

Disabled students often use a combination of methods to engage with course material: sometimes using technology, sometimes using helpers and sometimes managing to cope unaided but with great effort. The more accessible you can make each component, the more the student's own energy can be reserved for those components that are problematic. The following view, expressed by a student who took part in an OU project in 1977, very aptly sums this up.

There is a point beyond which I cannot be helped. I will not be able to read any faster, no matter how large the magnification. I will never better my current speed and if my sight deteriorates further, I anticipate having to rely on voice technology exclusively. The point is that it takes me ten times as long as anybody else to read the text and make notes. Anything that can speed that process or make it less laborious is an advantage, not just in terms of the amount of time needed to study, but also in the attitude one is likely to have towards study; whether one approaches it with pleasant anticipation, grim determination or the hopelessness that accompanies so much of disability. For many disabled people, every morning is the start of a new mountain to climb. For those who wish to study, there are many obstacles to overcome in order to get to the foothills of study. Anything that means that one spends less time dealing with one's disability and more time actually studying is greatly to be desired.
Source: Open University Project ‘Alternative media for print disabled students’: Web Page 1997 (no longer available)

It is important not to assume a limitation just because you cannot imagine a solution. As a simple example, the first question some people ask when told blind people use computers isn't ‘How can they read the screen?’, it's ‘How do they use the keyboard when they can't see the keys?’ The answer, of course, is that they learn to touch-type, as do many sighted people.

It's tempting to say ‘I don't think a student with X disability can do my course’. A better approach would be to ask ‘How can I help a student with X disability to study my course more easily? What reasonable adjustment can I make that will not disadvantage other students?’

The problem facing people who manage resources for supporting disabled students is how to interpret the term ‘reasonable’. The sections ‘What is reasonable?’ and ‘What is not reasonable?’ list our interpretation of what you should do and what you are not expected to do.

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4.4.1 Do – anticipate that there may be disabled students

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Every subject area is likely to have potential disabled students. Regardless of any feeling that you may have that students with particular disabilities will never want to do your course, you have to consider that they might apply and that you have a duty to consider your response.

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4.4.2 Do – identify challenging activities

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

There are two types of learning barrier for disabled students.

Challenges inherent in the learning objectives, such as the challenges that face deaf students who wish to study modern languages.
Challenges posed by the teaching method, such as those that face deaf students when using audioconferencing.

You don't have to be an expert in disability to recognise that:

someone with no useful sight will need an alternative to print
a deaf person will need a transcript of audio components
someone who cannot hold a stylus will have problems using some mobile devices.

As an educational practitioner, and having completed the previous accessibility activities, you should be able to recognise the parts of a course that present barriers to learning.

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4.4.3 Do – consider the impact of alternative study methods and helpers

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

The impact is related to the two types of barrier mentioned above and the intended learning outcomes of an activity. For example, does it contradict the learning objectives if a deaf student relies on a transcript or subtitles for a specific activity? A student may wish to use a helper for course components that cannot be made accessible to them. Returning to the example of someone who cannot hold a stylus, will it be the same experience if they observe someone else using a mobile device?

The term non-medical helper (NMH) is used in the UK to describe someone who provides study support, sign language interpretation or reading services for a disabled person. For more information about the role of NMHs look at some university sites, for example a page about non-medical help at the University of Huddersfield.

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4.4.4 Do – provide alternative academic content

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

There is a difference between supplying deaf students with a simple transcript of an interview, which is a straightforward translation between formats, and providing blind students with an alternative to a visual image. In some cases, a transcript may require an academic decision about whether to transcribe every ‘um’ and ‘er’ or background noise. Decisions about alternative academic content need to be taken by the author of a resource, or someone with the same understanding of the intended pedagogy.

When considering descriptions of visual material, decisions about what should be described and what depth of description is necessary are closely linked to the learning objective of the image (OU ‘Guidelines for describing visual teaching material’). Is it a graph, which students must read information from, or is it a photograph of the author, which is interesting but doesn't contribute to the teaching? If it is associated with a question, can the image be described without giving away the answer?

Descriptions could be provided by support staff who may not be subject specialists. This leads to very detailed but very long descriptions, which add to the extra time load already experienced by disabled students. We have found that in some subjects only a small proportion of images require a very detailed description for visually impaired students, although the graphics are very useful for most students.

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4.4.5 Do – provide information

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Clear information for students and advisors is essential. Disabled students need to know whether they can complete all the learning objectives and what adjustments they can expect. They need this information in good time before they start the course so that they can plan ahead. We have more to say on this subject in the section, ‘Informing students’.

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4.4.6 Do – seek additional funding for expensive adjustments

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If a reasonable adjustment requires extra resources, such as using more expensive but accessible software, course providers should ask whether their institutions receive government funding for disabled students and bid for extra resources.

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4.5.1 Don't – alter courses to the disadvantage of non-disabled students

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Educators are not expected to make changes that would make the course less effective for most other students. For example, audioconferencing may be a valuable tool that has a positive effect on students’ grades. In this case, you would not be expected to abandon it, even if the audioconferencing cannot be made accessible for deaf students.

Health and safety for all students also has to be maintained, although it is rare for there to be a conflict.

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4.5.2 Don't – compromise academic standards

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If you make adjustments in examinations and assessments, you must still be satisfied that a student is being assessed against the same learning objectives as other students.

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4.5.3 Don't – compromise requirements of external bodies

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If your course is provided for an external body, you should discuss with them any adjustments that may conflict with their requirements.

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4.5.4 Don't – compromise budgets

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If you have explored all possible funding sources and still cannot afford an expensive adjustment, you are not expected to put the rest of the course and provision for other students at risk. Again, in countries with disability discrimination legislation, you must be prepared to defend your position if a student brings a legal case against you.

If you decide that the nature of the course means that it is highly unlikely that a student with a particular disability will ever apply, it may be considered defensible not to provide an adjustment for that disability. You should still be prepared to justify your decision and to have a risk strategy in place to manage the situation if a student with that disability does apply.

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4.6.1 What if a learning objective CAN'T be achieved?

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

What can you do if you have considered all the adjustments appropriate for a particular student and you have determined that they can't achieve the learning objective?

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4.6.2 Record your decisions

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If you are subject to disability discrimination legislation, it is important to record your reasoning in case a student decides to make a legal challenge. Record who was responsible for taking the decision and the pedagogic and practical grounds that led to their decision.

You also have to decide whether a student can still pass the course even if they can't achieve all the learning objectives.

It is important to stand back for a moment and compare this situation with that of a non-disabled student who chooses not to study all of the material on the course. While you may hold the view that all students must study all the material, in practice there will always be students who skip material that doesn't relate directly to an assessment.

As an example, one OU course had an activity that required students to study visual resources and to draw their own conclusions about the images’ significance. The course team felt that descriptions for visually impaired students would not satisfy the learning outcome and that they should be discouraged from doing the course. Further consideration revealed that it was possible for any student to substitute the assessment score of this activity with the assessment score of an alternative activity. So it was possible for any student to achieve a good grade without completing the visual resources activity. Descriptions were not supplied for this activity, but they were supplied for other parts of the course where visual judgements were not required.

So, make sure that you are not expecting disabled students to prove that they have carried out an activity independently, unless you are asking all students to provide evidence of this in your assessment scheme.

A note on assessment

If you are providing alternative assignments or examination questions, you should make sure that both sets of students have the same number of options and choices. You should set two papers, one with substitutes for the inaccessible questions, rather than just adding more options to the general paper.

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4.6.3 If the objectives CAN be achieved

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

If a major learning objective cannot be achieved, this should be apparent from the early stage of course planning. Once the learning objectives have been considered, the accessibility of each component of a course should be examined.

Responsibility for delivering adjustments varies between organisations. Some higher education institutions may have a centralised system for providing web-based resources, with a central responsibility for accessibility. The institutions may also have a system for providing accessible alternatives to print and other components. In other cases, individuals or course teams make their own arrangements.

It is our view that those who are responsible for the teaching content are also responsible for its accessibility, regardless of how this is technically achieved. In a centralised system, teachers should still be actively involved in identifying potential learning barriers. They should request that web designers follow accessibility guidelines and the teachers should provide alternative academic content such as descriptions of essential graphics. They may devolve some tasks but if, for example, that task is the writing of descriptions, the teacher must be satisfied the descriptions are academically sound.

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4.7 Informing students

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Students need accurate information about accessibility before they enrol on a course. This may seem like common sense, but it is a significant contributor to students’ legal complaints. It is important that details of reasonable adjustments are carefully recorded, including the limitations of alternative formats and accessible design. The second accessibility activity, ‘Specifying, designing and evaluating accessibility’, will look more closely at specifying and evaluating web resources and software.

Assuming that you have accurate information, students need to know:

how much of the course is accessible – will they still be able to pass?
whether they can use a non-medical helper – will that contradict the learning objectives?
when in the timetable the challenges will occur – when will they need most support?
what types of alternative/accessible media will be provided – how much will they have independent access to?

The challenge of supplying correct and timely information is one that is currently under review at the OU. The majority of prospective OU disabled students rely on the printed prospectus and online information for course choice. Although all the information about courses recommends that disabled students contact an advisor, only about ten per cent do so before they enrol.

The following activity task is designed to bring together the various strands about acessibility that we have covered so far.

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4.8 Activity task

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

1. Read through the four scenarios below and choose one to answer the associated questions.

Work out your answers to the questions posed.

You will find your list of challenging activities and solutions useful here. In a real situation, you would need to ask questions of colleagues and students, so think about what information might be missing from the scenario. In your own situation think about which colleagues you might consult to find this information. Make a note of any assumptions that you make.

Scenario 1 A course with extensive audio

You are planning an elearning activity for a modern language course. The course uses an audioconferencing system as an important tool for practising and tutoring spoken language. The tool also has a text-chat facility. Students are not assessed on their use of the conferencing but experience has shown that those who use it achieve better grades.

Which students may have difficulty using the audioconferencing?

What adjustments could be made?

What adjustments do you think would be considered reasonable or not reasonable?

What information would you provide to alert students to potential challenges?

Scenario 2 A course with multimedia

You are planning an elearning activity, which includes commissioning software that students will use to look at images, listen to audio and complete an interactive quiz. Completion of the quiz is an individual activity that counts towards assessment.

What might some students find challenging in this activity?

What adjustments could be made?

What adjustments do you think would be considered reasonable or not reasonable?

Would your response be different if it was a group activity?

What would you include in your specification to the software developers?

What information would you provide to alert students to potential challenges?

Scenario 3 A course with extensive video

You are planning an elearning activity that includes a DVD video. The video has a large number of short clips: some with interviews, some are situations with voice-overs and some are street scenes with background sounds but no dialogue or voice-over. Students are expected to study the street scenes in detail and to write essays about them.

What might some students find challenging in this activity?

What adjustments could be made?

What adjustments do you think would be considered reasonable or not reasonable?

What would you include in your specification to the DVD developers?

What information would you provide to alert students to potential challenges?

Scenario 4 A course with many diagrams

You are planning an extensive elearning activity about science topics. Some of the topics use a small amount of mathematical notation and there are large numbers of diagrams and illustrations. Students are expected to study data, maps and charts and to interpret their meaning.

Which aspects of the activity might some students find challenging?

What adjustments could be made?

What adjustments do you think would be considered reasonable or not reasonable?

What information would you provide to alert students to potential challenges?

2. Post your answers to the unit forum.

3. Discuss the issues raised in this activity in the forum. Focus on access to the learning, your moral and legal obligations and what kind of support you might get from work colleagues. Do you agree or disagree with the views we have put forward in this activity?

There are no right or wrong answers to this activity task. It is intended to help you to find out how you feel about tackling accessibility and to help you to apply the material we have presented in these activities to your own situation.

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4.9 Resources

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (a part of the US Department of Education), ‘Special analysis 2002: nontraditional undergraduates’

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2002/analyses/nontraditional/index.asp

OU ‘Introduction to accessibility’ http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/index.cfm?wpid=2488

OU ‘Guidelines for describing visual teaching material’ http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/index.cfm?workspacepageid=2709

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5.1 Design decisions

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

In this activity, we examine in more detail the design decisions that affect accessibility for different groups of disabled students. The activity will help you to create accessible resources, or can be used as a basis to inform your discussions with those who create such resources on your behalf.

We introduce the process of including accessibility considerations in the specification of online learning resources, including 10 principles for accessibility that can be included in a specification. This is followed by an overview of the use and limitations of accessibility guidelines. The discussion leads on to the options for evaluating accessibility and looks briefly at automated evaluation tools and their limitations.

First, please read through all the material for this activity, including the design guidelines and resources. Then do the activity task. In the activity task you will return to a scenario from ‘Accessibility, pedagogy and reasonable adjustments’ to consider how to specify accessibility. You will then use two automated accessibility checkers to check the accessibility of a web page and compare your findings with the findings of others in your tutor group.

In this activity we discuss the accessibility of web-based resources and course software. If a disabled student is to engage independently with online learning, she/he will need to be able to manage files and folders, use email, participate in forums, use login screens, assessment submission and feedback systems and all the other tools that are involved.

This resource covers only the use of personal computers, but it is important to note the distinction between these and public service devices. A ticket machine, for example, should be usable by a disabled person without the need for them to use assistive technology. In other words, accessibility should be built into public service devices. This means that people who use assistive technology with a computer will have different requirements for other interactive devices. As you consider non-PC-based technologies in this course, you should bear accessibility in mind. For example, you may be studying delivery of online learning using devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). As the boundaries between computers and mobile devices are becoming blurred, assistive technology such as speech output for phones and PDAs is becoming available. Some examples are listed in the Resources at the end of the section.

Even if you are not the person who actually implements the design or writes the code for a course resource such as a website, it is useful to understand the requirements of different users and the implications of these for the designer or programmer. If you are able to construct your specification with a clear understanding of what is reasonable, you will have a more satisfactory ‘product’. It is also cheaper to get accessibility requirements included at the specification stage than it is to fix them when a disabled student registers for a course and the designer or programmer has moved on. If there is no more funding for further development, an inaccessible resource will remain a barrier to disabled students.

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5.2 Specifying accessibility

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

You should have a good idea, from the earlier activities, ‘Introducing accessibility and disability’ and ‘Introducing accessibility and assistive technology’, of the way in which disabled students interact with computers.

Students may have different disabilities but some will experience the same accessibility issues while others will have very specific requirements. You may find that some of the requirements at first glance appear to be contradictory. One example is the need for visually driven layout for students with dyslexia, which appears to conflict with the need for text driven layout for visually impaired students. These needs are not mutually exclusive and the flexibility of web technology allows for both to be achieved in the same design.

Design for online accessibility should cater for a wide range of needs and abilities because it is not possible to anticipate everything that might be needed by a particular person. This is because people may have multiple disabilities, their abilities may change over time, people may be temporarily disabled due to an accident (e.g. broken limb) or while waiting for treatment (e.g. cataracts), or people may be temporarily unable to use particular functions (e.g. their eyes or hands may be busy, they may be in a noisy environment). Therefore, a design should be flexible and enable alternative methods of interaction. Relevant accessibility guidelines should inform the design process from an early stage. A specification that clearly sets out identified accessibility requirements will make it easier to assess whether design decisions are meeting those requirements.

Another important consideration at the specification stage is which development environment or language to use. The selection of a particular development environment may have accessibility implications, as some web development and programming tools have better support for accessibility than others. For example, a resource developed in HTML would be relatively easy to make accessible, whereas one developed in Java or Flash would be more difficult because the process is more complex. Similarly, the programming or authoring tools used to develop a resource may or may not have advice or support for the developer in making the resource accessible.

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5.2.1 Technical and usable accessibility

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

An online resource needs to be usable for disabled users as well as accessible. Lawton Henry (2002) makes the distinction between ‘technical accessibility’ and ‘usable accessibility’. We will illustrate this distinction with two examples.

In a web-based example, a blind user listening to a screen reader may technically be able to access the data presented in a table, i.e. the screen reader may be able to read the content of each cell in the table. But the user also needs to be able to navigate between, and read, the cells in a meaningful and useful way. This may mean the user needs to access contextual information about the cells, perhaps by relating the data cells to their associated column or row headers.
In an interactive software example, a user who cannot operate a mouse needs to be able to operate all the interface buttons using the keyboard only. The software may be technically accessible if the user can utilise the tab key to move from button to button and press enter to operate the button. However, this would not be very usable if there were 10 buttons and the user needed to operate the buttons in any order, at any time, e.g. the third button followed by the ninth button. To accommodate usable accessibility the software could provide keyboard shortcuts to allow the user to operate the buttons in any order.

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5.2.2 Key accessibility principles

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Below are listed 10 principles for accessibility. These principles underpin many of the sets of accessibility guidelines available, which are referred to in ‘Design guidelines and their limitations’.

1. Keyboard operation: the ability to operate applications fully via the keyboard.
This means supporting the standard keyboard shortcuts available for the operating system, such as Alt+F4 to close a window of a Windows application, and F1 to open the Help file. It may also be useful to provide special shortcuts for the application, such as the space bar to toggle the ‘play’ and ‘pause’ buttons of a media player.
2. Compatibility with assistive technology, such as screen readers and text readers, screen magnifiers, voice input, switch input.
This may mean implementing the application for a widely used environment, such as Windows, Mac or UNIX, and adopting the accessibility standards of that Operating System (OS).
For screen magnifiers, this means providing text as pure text, rather than as images, so that the text is not distorted when it is magnified. It also means controlling the quality of pictures so that they do not distort when magnified.
3. Screen reader access: allowing interface objects and other content to be read by a screen reader, and to be read in a meaningful way.
This means providing appropriate text labels on all buttons, menus and menu items, icons, sliders, and all other interface objects. In order for these objects to be read in a meaningful way they need to be placed in a logical order, and the order needs to be consistent across different screens.
4. Descriptions of visual material may be required, depending on the application or the purpose of the content.
In an educational context a multimedia package should provide text descriptions of important visual information. For example, data shown in a graph or a photograph of a sculpture may need to be described. The need for a description depends very much on the purpose of the visual information, i.e. pictures used for decoration may not need to be described, but pictures that convey meaning may need to be described. See the OU ‘Guidelines for describing visual teaching material’.
5. Customisation: the ability to inherit operating system settings for colours/fonts, or the ability to customise display.
Inheritance of users’ settings: the ability of software to inherit operating system settings. Dyslexic and partially sighted people may make changes to the operating system display settings; e.g. making all text one colour and all backgrounds another colour. In practice, this means designers and developers should not override operating system settings with software settings. An alternative approach can be to provide users with a choice of fonts and colours to be used as the default settings. However, a drawback of the latter approach is that it is difficult to provide a range that accommodates the needs of all partially sighted or dyslexic users. It is, therefore, preferable to inherit the user's existing settings.
6. Control over audio output: the ability to adjust volume and tone and to link hearing aids to amplifiers, speakers or induction loop systems.
In practice this applies more to interactive devices located in public areas, such as libraries or shopping centres, where the relevant controls and connections need to be provided. For PC-based software this requirement will be met by the operating system and the user's own equipment.
7. Alternative to speech input: people who cannot speak may require an alternative to speech input facilities such as audioconferencing.
In practice this would probably mean the provision of text-based facilities in addition to the speech input.
8. Alternative to text output: deaf people who cannot read or write text because sign language is their primary language may require an alternative to text output or text entry.
In practice this might mean the provision of pictorial information as output or in a menu, or even the provision of a signing avatar (software that creates an animated sign language interpreter).
9. Alternative to colour: colour-blind people may require information that is conveyed through colour to be conveyed in another way.
In practice this may mean giving coloured objects text labels or differentiating their appearance in other ways. For example, if important information is presented in red, it could also be labelled as ‘important’ or highlighted in another way.
10. Clear, consistent design: This means using common navigation tools, such as menus, meaningful icons and so on, and applying them consistently throughout the site. This helps those using assistive technology and students with dyslexia.

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5.3 Design guidelines and their limitations

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Having considered accessibility requirements and principles in ‘Specifying accessibility’, we now take a closer look at the guidelines that are available to support the development of accessible resources. Guidelines are available from many different sources and cover a variety of environments, from software and educational technology to websites and consumer electronics. As a starting point, ‘Accessibility design guidelines’ on the Resources page at the end of this section lists some useful sources. We suggest you take the time to browse through it and visit some of the links.

Guidelines, however, should be used with care, and it is important that designers are aware of the limitations that have been identified in the literature. There is a body of literature describing the limitations of design guidelines: for example, Bastien and Scapin (1992); de Souza, Long and Bevan (1990); Mosier and Smith (1986); Tetzlaff and Schwartz (1991); Thovtrup and Nielsen (1991); and Colwell (2001). These authors have studied how design guidelines are used by user interface designers and found that designers have difficulty in selecting, interpreting, and applying guidelines. Some of these studies suggest ways of improving how guidelines are presented to developers, but few guideline producers are aware of this literature, let alone implement the recommendations.

Colwell's (2001) study of web accessibility guidelines found that student web developers needed more information about disability in general and information on how disabled people use the web, in particular, in order to effectively apply the advice provided by the guidelines. Paddison and Englefield (2004) further discuss the issues associated with the use of heuristics (another term used for guidelines) in evaluating the accessibility of websites.

Organisations or groups who want to convey users’ requirements for a particular product or service, such as an accessible website, often produce guidelines, as this appears to be a reasonable method for conveying requirements. However, the guidelines that are produced are often difficult to use because they are either too complex or too simplistic, or do not contain sufficient information about the needs of disabled people. This often results in the product or service not conforming to the guidelines, either partially or in full.

Despite the problems associated with the development and use of accessibility guidelines, they can still be a useful tool to give developers a basic understanding of the requirements of disabled users. See ‘Accessibility design guidelines’ on the Resources page at the end of this section for our list of accessibility guidelines for websites, software, and hardware.

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5.4 Evaluating accessibility

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It is good practice to include evaluation in the development of any product or resource, but it is particularly important to evaluate accessibility because of the difficulties associated with the use of accessibility guidelines, described earlier in ‘Design guidelines and their limitations’.

Accessibility can be evaluated in different ways.

Testing with disabled users.
Testing by accessibility experts.
Assessing conformance to checklists/guidelines, including the use of automated checkers.
Testing with assistive technologies.

Approach 1, ‘Testing with disabled users’, is the best way of getting first-hand feedback from disabled users, but can be costly and time consuming to arrange. Approach 2, ‘Testing by accessibility experts’, can provide feedback from the perspectives of all the disability groups, but can also be costly. Therefore, Approach 3, ‘Assessing conformance to checklists/guidelines’, and Approach 4, ‘Testing with assistive technologies’, are probably more appropriate for teachers, designers, and developers if they do not have easy access to users or experts.

You have already read about assistive technologies and used simulators in the earlier activity, ‘Introducing accessibility and assistive technology’. Therefore, this activity will focus on the use of automated accessibility checkers to assess websites' conformance to guidelines. The difficulties with the use of guidelines were discussed earlier, in particular the need to have background knowledge or experience of disability in order to use guidelines effectively. The same difficulty is associated with the use of automated checkers and simulating users' experience. This means that any outcomes of evaluation should be treated with care, and, if possible, confirmed by an accessibility expert or by a representative sample of users.

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5.4.1 Aim of accessibility evaluation

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The aim of an accessibility evaluation is to assess the extent of the accessibility of the teaching resource: not to evaluate whether it is or is not accessible. In other words, the question to ask is ‘To what extent is this product accessible to people with a range of disabilities?’ rather than ‘Is this product accessible?’ An accessibility evaluation should assess both technical accessibility and usable accessibility.

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5.4.2 When to evaluate accessibility

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Technical and usable accessibility should be evaluated throughout the design life cycle, just as general usability should be. As with usability, the earlier in the process accessibility is evaluated the more likely the final product will be both technically and usably accessible. Accessibility can be evaluated or tested in early ideas and paper designs as well as prototype systems, and different aspects of accessibility can be evaluated at these different stages. For example, the general acceptability of a design idea to a disabled user can be evaluated early in the design process, and the feasibility of keyboard-only operation can be evaluated with a paper design. However, technical compatibility with assistive technology can be tested (as opposed to simulated) only after a prototype has been developed. Furthermore, like usability, accessibility is evaluated in different ways at different stages; for example, it may be useful to bring in an accessibility expert to evaluate design ideas or an early prototype, and then to conduct user testing with disabled users once a more advanced prototype has been developed.

If you are working with designers and developers who have little or no knowledge of accessibility issues, they need to be aware that fundamental decisions, such as which development environment the system will be programmed in, could have important accessibility implications and should be tested as part of the decision process.

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5.4.3 How to evaluate accessibility

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Accessibility guidelines and checklists can be used to evaluate a design or prototype. Despite the difficulties associated with the use of guidelines, they can be a useful tool for getting general insight into the accessibility of a website or system. As we discussed earlier, the main limitation of the use of guidelines or checklists is the fact that background knowledge of disability and assistive technology is required in order to effectively interpret and apply such guidelines.

Once a prototype of the application has been developed, basic accessibility testing can be conducted by simulating the interaction between a disabled user and the application. For example, switching off the monitor, unplugging the mouse, and using a screen reader can give useful insight into how a blind person might use an application. You can also gain an impression of how the pages might be presented to different users by viewing pages with a text-browser emulator (such as Lynx viewer), by adjusting browser settings (such as loading a page without the images, or ignoring page styles) or by adjusting operating system settings (such as adjusting colour settings).

However, these techniques do not provide a full picture of the experience of users with disabilities. For example, sighted people cannot easily ‘switch off’ their visual memory of the layout of the screen, nor can they experience what it is like to interact with a computer for extensive periods using, for example, voice recognition software or switch-controlled software.

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5.4.4 Using automated checking tools

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Another approach to testing website accessibility is the use of automated tools. These tools are useful for obtaining a quick overview of a site's accessibility and for checking technical accessibility. Examples of automated accessibility checking tools include:

WebXACT: A free online service that allows people to test single web pages for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues. It is provided by Watchfire, who also offer Bobby, a desktop application that allows the user to check a whole website rather than single pages.
WAVE: WAVE was developed at the Temple University Institute on Disabilities, based on the work of Dr Leonard Kasday and Web AIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) at the Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD) at Utah State University.

These automated checking tools have been developed to assess a website's conformance to various web accessibility guidelines and standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (Chisholm et al., 1999). A range of tools is available, each with different functions. Some tools are available online and can be used to check one url at a time; others are available as applications to run on the developer's computer. The online tools are often free to use, while the downloadable applications usually have to be paid for. Some tools provide technical guidance in resolving accessibility problems, while others just offer a report of the accessibility problems found. Some tools provide a logo that can be placed on sites that have been ‘approved’ by the tool.

However, automated checking tools do have limitations. One limitation acknowledged by the developers of the tools is that some aspects of a site cannot be checked automatically. The tools will indicate in their feedback which aspects require human judgement, such as whether images have appropriate labels. For example, when checking accessibility, WebXACT provides ‘errors’ for aspects that can be detected automatically and ‘warnings’ for aspects that require human judgement. However, as discussed earlier, this kind of judgment can require some background knowledge of disability and assistive technology in order to make appropriate decisions. A further limitation of automated checking tools is that the guidelines on which the tools are based have themselves not been empirically evaluated and, therefore, the tools inherit this limitation.

There is some literature that discusses the use of automated tools in the evaluation of accessibility. For example, Ivory et al. (2003) take a detailed look at the use of automated tools for evaluation of accessibility. Rowan et al. (2000) have developed an evaluation methodology involving automated tools. Blair (2004) reviews the features of some tools, including an assessment of which tools are most suited to different types of users, such as web developers, accessibility experts, or those with little technical expertise. The Disability Rights Commission report (2004) on accessibility of public websites used automated testing together with user testing. Interestingly, the Commission reported that when it compared the findings from automated testing with those from user testing there was no correlation. They suggested this was because the accessibility problems identified by users were not problems that could be found through automated testing.

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5.5 Activity task

The Open University — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:48:19 GMT

Return to the scenarios that you used in ‘Accessibility, pedagogy and reasonable adjustments’. Having now read the section on specifying accessibility, is there anything you would change in your own or other people's specifications to the software developers to ensure accessibility was included?
Run the WebXACT accessibility checker on a web page. You can choose any page you like, perhaps a page you have developed, or one from your Favorites list, an online shopping page, or the home page of your employer.
Look at the WebXACT results and make a list of the Priority 1 problems that are found. Also note which disability groups would be affected by these problems.
Post your findings to the unit forum, along with the url of the page you tested.
What are the most common problems identified by the participants in the forum?
How confident are you that the automated checker has found all the accessibility problems on the page?
Now test the same page with the WAVE checker. Are there any differences between the reports from the two checkers? If so, what would be your strategy for resolving these differences when deciding which problems should be fixed? Discuss your thoughts on the forum.

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5.6.1 Accessible mobile technology

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ETO Engineering, ‘Accessible cell phones’

Nuance TALKS: speech output for mobile phones

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5.6.2 Accessibility design guidelines

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Listed below is a selection of accessibility guidelines that offer a starting point for your own research into the guidelines available for designing accessible, user-friendly products.

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5.6.3 Accessible technology

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Arditi, A. (2005) Making Text Legible: Designing for People with Partial Sight, http://lighthouse.org/accessibility/legible/

Connell, B.R., Jones, M., Mace, R., Mueller, J., Mullick, A., Ostroff, E., Sanford, J., Steinfeld, E., Story, M. and Vanderheiden, G. (1997) What is Universal Design? Principles of Universal Design,

Trace Research and Development Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, ‘Designing a more usable world – for all’

Vanderheiden, G.C. and Vanderheiden, K.R. (1992) Guidelines for the Design of Consumer Products to Increase their Accessibility to Persons with Disabilities or who are Aging,

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5.6.4 Educational software/learning application

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Barstow, C. andRothberg, M. (2002) IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications

Hardware

IBM, ‘Hardware accessibility’ checklist,

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5.6.5 Software

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IBM, ‘Software accessibility’ guidelines and checklist,

IBM Human Ability and Accessibility Center

Trace Research and Development Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison,‘Application software design guidelines’

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5.6.6 Website and browser

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Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and Jacobs, I. (eds) (1999) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

Jacobs, I., Gunderson, J. and Hansen, E. (eds) (2002) User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

TechDis, e-Learning, http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=9 6 TechDis, Web accessibilityF

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5.7 References

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Bastien, J.M.C. and Scapin, D. (1992) ‘Validation of ergonomic criteria for the evaluation of human-computer interfaces’, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, vol.4, no.2, pp. 183–96.

Blair, P. (2004) A review of free, online accessibility tools, Logan, UT, Web AIM, Utah State University, (Accessed 1 August 2007).

Chisholm, W., Vanderheiden, G. and Jacobs, I. (eds) (1999) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), (Accessed 5 December 2006).

Colwell, C. (2001) ‘Non-visual access to the World Wide Web (Accessed 1 August 2007).

de Souza, F.L., Long, J.B. and Bevan, N. (1990) ‘Types of error and difficulty in using human factors guidelines: the case of interface menu design’ in Lovesy, E.J. (ed.) Contemporary Ergonomics, Proceedings of the Ergonomics Society's Annual Conference, Leeds, England, 3–6 April, 1990, London, Taylor & Francis, pp. 340–6.

Ivory, M.Y., Mankoff, J. and Le, A. (2003) ‘Using automated tools to improve web site usage by users with diverse abilities’, IT and Society, vol.1, no.3, pp. 195–236.

Lawton Henry, S. (2002) ‘Understanding web accessibility’ in Thatcher, J., Bohman, P., Burks, M., Lawton Henry, S., Regan, B., Swierenga, S., Urban, M.D., and Waddell, C.D., Constructing Accessible Websites, Birmingham, Glasshaus; chapter, (Accessed 1 August 2007).

Mosier, J.N. and Smith, S.L. (1986) ‘Application of guidelines for designing user interface software’, Behaviour and Information Technology, vol.5, no.1, pp.39–46.

Paddison, C. and Englefield, P. (2004) ‘Applying heuristics to accessibility inspections’, Inter acting with Computers, vol.16, no.3, pp. 507–21.

Rowan, M., Gregor, P., Sloan, D. and Booth, P. (2000) ‘Evaluating web resources for disability access’ in Proceedings of the fourth international ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies, Arlington, Virginia, United States, 13–15 November 2000, New York, NY, ACM Press, pp. 80–4; also available in PDF format at http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=354324 (Accessed 1 August 2007).

Tetzlaff, L. and Schwartz, D.R. (1991) ‘Use of guidelines in interface design’ in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching through Technology (CHI ‘91), New Orleans, LA, pp. 329–33.

Thovtrup, H. and Nielsen, J. (1991) ‘Assessing the usability of a user interface standard’ in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching through Technology (CHI ‘91), New Orleans, LA, pp. 335–41.

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Acknowledgements

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