Prize for e-learning accessibility research
A research paper drawing attention to the need for universal accessibility to Web resources has won the ‘best paper’ prize from the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). The award was presented at ALT-C 2005, the 12th International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology, held at the University of Manchester last week.
The paper, on ‘Implementing a holistic approach to e-learning accessibility’, was written by Brian Kelly of UKOLN (the centre of expertise in digital information management at the University of Bath, partly funded by Jisc); Lawrie Phipps, Senior Adviser for Higher Education at TechDis (the Jisc-funded educational advisory service on accessibility and inclusion); and Cora Howell of the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Bristol.
In 2001, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA) extended anti-discrimination legislation to the education sector and placed a duty on higher education institutions to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure that disabled students are not disadvantaged. Much emphasis is now placed on accessibility in education, and it has generally become synonymous with Web or e-learning accessibility.
The World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has developed guidelines that help to ensure that Web resources can be accessed by people with disabilities. However, this paper argues that there is a need for a more sophisticated model for addressing accessibility in e-learning.
Over the past 18 months the authors have been working with academic staff, learning technologists and disability staff to find out how standards and guidelines fit in with the legislation on accessibility, and how they affect the learning experiences of disabled students. They have developed a simple holistic framework for the development of accessible e-learning resources, which takes into account the usability of e-learning, pedagogic issues and student learning styles in addition to technical and resource issues.
The authors feel there is a need to provide accessible learning experiences, not necessarily accessible e-learning experiences. They say there is a need to recognise that, just as ICT has been used to provide accessible simulations of inaccessible ‘real-world’ learning, so accessible real-world learning resources can be used as a replacement for inaccessible e-learning resources. For example, rather than seeking to develop an accessible version of an interactive 3D visualisation of a molecule, lecturers should consider the learning experience provided by the e-learning resources and develop an alternative that provides an equivalent learning experience.
The model also recognises that accessibility is primarily about people and not about technology, so staff should take into account an individual’s specific needs, institutional and subject factors when providing accessible resources.
The authors conclude that there is a need for a quality assurance framework for the development of accessible e-learning resources, which ensures that policies are provided and systematic procedures are drawn up for ensuring compliance with the policies.
Click here to access the TechDis announcement and to read the prize-winning paper.