Open access - your flexible friend

by Clive Shepherd


How would your manager (or your accountant) react if you told them that, because of the way you’d designed your e-learning system or your e-learning content, as many as 20% of your potential learners (aka customers) were unable to gain access or make any sense of what you provided? And how do you think the learners felt? In this article, Clive Shepherd examines just what’s required to make e-learning accessible for all and explores the implications (legal and otherwise) of sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the issue.

Contents
Why accessibility is good for you
Spinning an accessible web
508 good reasons to take note
Closer to home
Let's get accessible
Case study: Age Concern
Six rules for improved web accessibility
Resources

Why accessibility is good for you

When organisations are asked why they are introducing e-learning, the benefit that appears top of the list is invariably ‘improved access to learning’. There’s no doubt that, by providing access to learning materials and opportunities to collaborate online, you are
freeing learners from the traditional constraints of time and space, and empowering them to take control of their own learning.

You would think that, if anyone was likely to benefit from the explosion of online opportunities, it was the sector of the population that has to live with the greatest constraints – the disabled. If you can’t get to the information, the information will come to you. In practice, accessibility in the online environment is patchy to say the least, as more content providers than not are oblivious to the measures that need to be taken to ensure all online users get to share equally in the benefits that the Internet can provide.

Essentially there are three good reasons why it makes sense to ensure that the e-learning
you provide is accessible to all. Let’s start with an appeal to your finer instincts – it’s simply the right thing to do. In the words of Jon Buttriss, Operations and Services Director for NETg: "The e-learning industry must take a lead in providing materials that are openly accessible for all. If we do not then disabled persons will be doubly disadvantaged in life, by not having access to the same quality of training as everyone else. That is simply unfair.”

If that didn’t work, how about an appeal to your wallet? First some statistics. It’s estimated that 14% of under 65s have some form of disability or functional limitation due to injury, illness or aging. The figure for 65’s and over is 50%. Then there’s colour blindness: some 8% of men and 0.4% of women suffer from some form of colour vision deficiency – in America alone, that’s 32 million people. And in 2000, the World Heath organization estimated that 20% of the world’s population (that’s 500 million people) live with some kind of physical disability. These are large, perhaps even scary numbers. The commercial implications are obvious – if you don’t address this sector of the population, someone else will. Even more importantly, many of your customers will insist that your products address accessibility issues and only go with suppliers who can meet these requirements. Suddenly you risk losing 100% of the market.

Still unconvinced? Then it’s time for some strong-arm tactics. If you won’t come voluntarily, the law may have to force you. As we shall see, legislators around the world are taking an increasing interest in accessibility issues, and are much less prepared to tolerate learning products that discriminate in terms of who can do the learning.

Spinning an accessible web

In the early days of the World Wide Web, accessibility was hardly an issue. The only medium available was text and, from the first implementation of HTML, all the functionality required was built-in to ensure that, if you wanted to make a web site accessible, you could. Assistive technology has been available for some time now, including screen readers, such as Jaws, Supernova and Windoweyes, which essentially read out web pages to users with a visual impairment.

Problems have arisen as programmers and graphic designers have entered the web arena to try and improve the visual impact and interactive functionality of web sites, without giving consideration of those users who have less than perfect sight, hearing or physical abilities. Graphics, tables, Flash, Java – all make it harder for screen readers and other assistive devices to cope – and all can be configured so that the assistive functionality built-in to browsers (such as variable font sizes) cannot operate as intended. A recent study by the Nielsen Norman Group, carried out with people who had at least three years’ experience of using assistive software and at least three months’ Internet experience, showed that ‘it is six times more difficult for someone to use the Internet using a screen reader than using no assistive technology’. According to usability guru, Jakob Nielsen: “Making the Web more accessible for users with various disabilities is to a great extent a matter of using HTML the way it was intended: to encode meaning rather than appearance. As long as a page is coded for meaning, it is possible for alternative browsers to present that meaning in ways that are optimized for the abilities of individual users and thus facilitate the use of the Web by disabled users.”

It became all too obvious that a large minority of users were being left behind as the Web strove to become more and more stylish and sophisticated. As a result, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that safeguards the standards that underly the Web, has formulated a series of guidelines to help web designers to make their sites accessible. The W3C Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is now almost universally accepted as the definitive statement on web accessibility. The guidelines are prioritised under three headings: (1) guidelines that must be satisfied, otherwise one or more groups will find it impossible to access information on the web page; (2) guidelines that should be satisfied, otherwise some groups will find it difficult to access; and (3) guidelines that may be addressed, to improve access to web documents. In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web: "The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."

508 good reasons to take note

While the WAI guidelines have been widely endorsed and followed, the stakes rose in 1998, when the United States Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to provide equal accessibility to technology and electronic information. Specifically, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, requires that, ‘as of June 2001, computer software applications purchased or developed by federal agencies are designed for accessibility by people who are blind, deaf or have poor motor skills’. Before you ask, that includes e-learning applications, so, if you want to do business with the US government (and they spend more on e-learning than anyone else), then you comply with Section 508. US business and educational institutions are likely to follow suit, making the world’s largest market ‘inaccessible’ to e-learning providers who don’t comply. Classroom training providers tend to operate within national boundaries, but e-learning providers really need the widest possible audience to justify the large investment in content development.

One provider that really had to take Section 508 seriously was NETg. Buttriss relates how they addressed the challenge: “About two years ago, we realised we had to make changes if we were to conform to the Act. We determined that, if we were to do anything, then we had to do it properly. It simply wasn’t on to create special courses for the disabled – our standard offerings just had to be accessible. After a massive effort of re-engineering, we now expect our entire IT and soft skills ranges to be compliant by March of 2003.”

NETg has been joined in the chase by SkillSoft. Last November, the Company announced the release of 373 upgraded business skills courses, fully compliant with Section 508. This release was the result of a year-long development initiative which included adapting courses to work with screen readers and other assistive technologies, providing text descriptions for all visual imagery, and ensuring all audio components had text equivalents. All components of SkillSoft courses, including learning objects and job aids, were incorporated in the initiative.

Closer to home

Astonishingly, discrimination against disabled people was entirely legal in the UK until 1995, when the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was brought in. The Act makes it unlawful to refuse to serve a disabled person or to offer service on different terms or to a lower standard. In 1999, a second set of provisions was implemented, which places a duty on providers to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to their services so disabled people can access them. Although the Act does not explicitly refer to an Internet or intranet web site as an example of a service, actions brought in Australia and the USA suggest that it can. Compliance with the W3C’s WAI guidelines, to the first priority level, would be deemed as a reasonable adjustment to make to ensure accessibility.

According to Martin Sloan from the Graduate School of Law, Glasgow, “It seems clear that a disabled person could bring an action under the Act. Whilst this may seem relatively straightforward on paper, in practice there are greater problems. The nature of the Act and in particular the Code of Practice is to encourage dispute resolution before a case reaches court. Thus, like the in US, it may be that the courts are never given a chance to make an express judgment on the issue. The provisions being of a civil rather than a criminal nature also hamper the influence of the court. Hence, at least in Scotland, there cannot be any punishing element in the court's determination. This lack of a deterrence means that service providers will view the potential application of the provisions with disdain until a successful test case is brought that reaches court and forces them to take notice.”

One company that is being proactive in meeting its obligations under the Act is Scottish Equitable. Jillian Givan is e-Learning Delivery Manager: “We have three deaf people on our staff and they have had difficulty in using the audio and video sections in the CBT courses that we produce in-house. We are keen, as are the employees, that they receive exactly the same training as everyone else, so we had a representative of the Deaf Society come in to sign along with the course. We have recently commissioned a report on accessibility to make sure that we take account of the needs of our disabled staff in future e-learning that we provide.”

Although education and 'certain ancillary services' are excluded from the DDA, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA) establishes legal rights for disabled students in pre- and post-16 education. It is unlawful for responsible bodies to treat a disabled person 'less favourably' than a non-disabled person for a reason that relates to the person's disability. For example, a dyslexic student applies to do a law degree. The university tells her that they do not take dyslexic students on law degrees. The treatment she receives is less favourable compared to other students, and the reason for the treatment relates to her disability. The university is likely to be acting unlawfully. If a disabled person is at a 'substantial disadvantage', responsible bodies are required to take reasonable steps to prevent that disadvantage.

For those responsible for creating bespoke solutions, it may not always be necessary or appropriate to try and engineer the materials for every audience. According to Ian Crossley, Bid Manager at UK training provider Parity, “It is simply not possible in every case to meet everybody’s needs with a single method. This could drive up the cost of e-learning to a level at which nobody would buy it. Sometimes it pays to address the needs of particular groups in different ways. For example, in an ECDL pilot that we conducted with the Department of Health, we provided one-to-one training for a single blind person, as it was uneconomic to make the necessary changes to the materials.”

Clearly, anyone associated with e-learning in the UK will find it essential to become fully conversant with the provisions of the DDA and SENDA, and the e-Learning Network provides a useful forum for obtaining and sharing this information. Vaughan Waller is Chairman of the e-Learning Network: “We consider it one of our key roles to extend our members’ knowledge and experience of accessibility issues. Accessibility is one of the most important considerations for e-learning providers and one that really cannot be overlooked.”

Let's get accessible

Next year sees the launch of a major new e-learning initiative in the higher education sector. The UK e-University (UKeU) will be offering a series of degree courses to students around the world, created and delivered in co-operation with leading UK universities. Jonathan Darby is Chief Architect for the UKeU: “We have developed a road map to providing the highest levels of accessibility and are looking to gradually improve the accessibility of our offering over time. Both the platform that we are developing with Sun and our course content will comply with WAI priority 1 throughout, and priority 2 where possible. We have adopted a fine-grained learning object approach which helps us in producing alternate forms of learning delivery to meet special needs.”

2003 sees not only the launch of the UKeU, it is also the European year of the disabled person. The e-learning community has the opportunity to lead the way in showing that online access really is for all. Our motives may be altruistic, but they can as easily be commercial, as Bruno Giversen, EMEA vice president of PlaceWare, a provider of virtual classroom and collaboration tools, reminds us: "Many training companies will see disability discrimination laws as a barrier, but this is simply not the case. Organisations making themselves open to the needs of existing and new customers and employees will stand apart from their competitors on many levels, some of them immeasurable but critical to success."

Case study: Age Concern

Age Concern turned to e-learning for the first time, to train their volunteer work force in all aspects of their policies and practices. With many of these working occasional, irregular or part-time hours and rarely in the same place at the same time, classroom-based training was a logistical nightmare. Age Concern felt that an e-learning solution was the answer and decided to create an online training programme that covered volunteering, health and safety, equal opportunities and confidentiality policies.

Much of the content already existed in print format. A much bigger issue was the demographic profile of the target audience. With a large percentage over retirement age, the possibility of deteriorated vision and less than perfect hand/eye coordination were a significant consideration. A lack of familiarity with computers was also a potential obstacle.
E-learning developer BrightWave was engaged to help to realise the charity’s vision and worked hand-in-hand with their client to find a design that was tailor-made for the audience. Unlike many e-learning designs, here simplicity was the key. There were to be no complex drag and drop exercises; the hotspots would be well separated, large and differentiated by shape and colour; the fonts and colours themselves were chosen with consideration for the visually impaired. In addition, all graphics and other media assets were designed for very low bandwidth, allowing Age Concern volunteers access using dial-up connections and older computers.

The specific challenges presented by the end-user demographics tested the maxim that technology should not interfere with learning to the full. With all the bells and whistles deliberately stripped away from the user interface, it was possible to focus totally on content and usability. This sentiment was echoed by Age Concern Training & Development Manager Paul Devlin who added, “Working with BrightWave, we have produced a programme that has an excellent look and feel and covers a good breadth of content. We have come up with something that will, I'm sure, benefit others in the federation.”

Six rules for improved web accessibility

The following rules are extracted from the Institute of IT Training’s Website Usability Standards:

1. Avoid combinations of foreground and background colour that would cause reading difficulties for colour-blind users.
2. To facilitate user-determined font sizing, use relative rather than absolute font sizes.
3. To facilitate the use of screen readers, use HTML heading tags to mark the beginning of each new section.
4. Use HTML alternative text to provide a textual description for images, animations, hot spots within client-side image maps and video files.
5. Include transcripts or sub-titles for all audio and video material containing the spoken word.
6. Ensure buttons and hotspots within image maps are sufficiently large as not to require precise positioning.

Resources

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
http://www.w3.org/WAI

Bobby – an online tool for measuring conformance with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
http://www.cast.org/bobby

National Center for Accessible Media: provide a symbol you can display on pages for which an effort has been made to enhance access
http://www.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/ncam/index.html

Thirty-something (million): should they be exceptions? A fascinating article from the Trace Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/30_some/30_some.htm

Visibone: colour charts for designers looking to avoid problems for those with colour blindness
http://www.visibone.com/colorblind

BT Labs: a detailed explanation of the problems of colour blindness, plus tips and palette charts to help you avoid problems
http://wwwlabs.bt.com/people/rigdence/colours

Neilson Norman Group: usability experts
http://www.nngroup.com/

The e-Learning Network: the association for those interested in the application of technologies to learning
http://www.elearningnetwork.org.uk/

Web Accessibility and the DDA, a paper by Martin Sloan, Graduate School of Law, Glasgow
http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/01-2/sloan.html

Disability Rights Commission
http://www.drc-gb.org

AbilityNet – a charity specialising in computers and disability
http://www.abilitynet.org.uk