Practical advise you can replicate

This presentation was prepared by the Desire2Learn Accessibility Interest
Group. A client-led consortium that evaluates and directs Desire2Learn’s accessibility initiatives.
• Sherry Lindquist – Instructional Designer, Northland College
• Ken Petri – Director, Ohio State University Web Accessibility Center
• Janna Cameron – Senior Usability Specialist, Desire2Learn
• Sandra Earl – Usability Specialist, Desire2Learn

• Instructional practices should focus on helping students learn; they should not be limited by the learning environment the material is delivered in.
• Accessible Learning Management Systems allow users to access and interpret learning material using technologies suited to their particular needs.
• Accessible course materials support multiple learning paths and styles, and are perceivable by students with disabilities.

• Learning tools that are compliant with WCAG 2.0 and other accessibility standards.
• Good interoperability with popular assistive technologies.
• User preferences and accessibility guides to support users with different disabilities.
• Built-in support for the creation of diverse, accessible learning materials and learning paths.

The ABC’s of accessible design
Always choose a style
Be careful of lists and tables
Caption and check

• Use styles for all formatting. Some styles you might use include: headings, paragraph, notes or images
• Headings are the most important styles to define. Headings help students interpret the information hierarchy of your content and are used by nonvisual users to skip through sections of content.
• Using styles correctly makes it easier to format the appearance of your document later and to create more accessible PDF or HTML documents from your content later.

• Create lists that use proper list styles.
• Add space between list items using style attributes rather than hard returns.
• Only use tables to display data; don’t use them for layout/design.
• Use smart art, text boxes, paragraph attributes, etc. for layout.
• Make sure tables make sense when read from left to right.
• Tag row and column headers correctly in HTML content

• Add captions to graphics and tables so that non-visual users can determine their meaning/relevance.
• Make sure captions describe the meaning of the graphic or table and not what it looks like.
• Give links unique, descriptive names rather than “click here” or “more.”
• Use an accessibility evaluation tool to check your content.

• Use “Save as PDF” instead of “Print to PDF” to ensure your styles are copied to your PDF document. You need to download a free MS Word 2007 Microsoft plug-in to do this.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041&displaylang=en
• Make sure “Create bookmarks using Headings” and “Document structure tags for accessibility” are selected in your Save as PDF options.
• Once you’ve created your PDF, use the File > Properties options to:
• give your document a title
• show the bookmarks panel and use a single page continuous layout
• show the document title as the window title
• apply security settings (such as password encryption) if desired, while maintaining accessibility using the “Enable text access for screen reader devices for the visually impaired” option
• Run an accessibility check on the PDF and clean up any problems.

• There are a lot of ways to improve the accessibility of your Word and PDF documents. However, the most accessible authoring format for course content is HTML.
• HTML does not require students to have proprietary software, such as MS
Word or Adobe Reader, to read the course content.
• Most assistive technologies focus on interoperability with standards compliant HTML. Therefore, HTML files allow more students to access your materials using the technologies that best match their individual needs.

• It’s complicated! Creating nice looking, well structured HTML files takes time.
30 second PowerPoint slide 30 second HTML file

• Desire2Learn recently designed a set of HTML templates to help instructors create good looking, standards compliant HTML files.
• The templates use a cascading style sheet (CSS) to format HTML files.
• The template packages include a number of sample files to get you started.
• The templates are available under a Creative Commons Zero license which means they can be used, shared and edited without any restrictions.
• You can find the templates in the Desire2Learn Community > Online Help >
Accessibility area, at the end of the slide show, and in our FUSION ePortfolios.

• To use the HTML templates in the Desire2Learn Learning Environment upload the zipped package to Manage Files and unzip it.
• Copy and rename one of the files and then edit it using our built-in HTML Editor.
• Do not change the folder structure or your HTML files may not reference the CSS file correctly.
• When you’re copying and pasting styles, make sure you copy and paste all of the code related to that style. For example, the image style is contained in a div element that controls how the image aligns on the page.
• Use the Content tool to share your new files with your course.

http://www.w3.org/WAI/
The World Wide Web consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative site. This site is the leading international standard on web accessibility.
http://projectone.cannect.org/
A well-organized tutorial on creating accessible courses funded by the Sloan
Foundation and CANnect.
http://webaim.org
A good site for articles and resources related to web accessibility.
http://www.desire2learn.com/access
Desire2Learn’s accessibility page on our corporate website.

• Janna Cameron and Ken Petri will be hosting an
Accessibility FAQ during the Desire2Learn led breakout session on Wednesday from 2:50 – 3:50pm.
• Review the Accessibility resources in the Desire2Learn
Help tool on the Desire2Learn Community.