The Accessibility of Course Management Systems: Can You Read This If

You’re Blind?Joe Wheaton, The Ohio State University

Ken Petri, The Ohio State University

Alan Foley, The University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mike Elledge, Michigan State University

Kostas Yfantis, The University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana

Why Accessibility?Accessible… Content design improves learning for all users Interface usability improves for all users Page code is more portable, semantically rich (i.e., minable), &

lighter It’s [probably] the law

“It’s the right thing to do”

Four Main Categories of Disability Accommodation

Visual (blindness, low-vision, color-blindness) Motor (traumatic injuries, congenital disorders and diseases) Auditory (full or partial hearing loss) Cognitive (attention deficits, learning disabilities in reading,

comprehension, memory, problem-solving, math or graphic interpretation)

Visual Impairments Screen readers can render

well formatted pages well See an example at

http://www.doit.wisc.edu/accessibility/video/intro.asp

Motor Impairment A famous scientist at your

university has ALS and is unable to use the mouse

He navigates the web with the special software that activates the keyboard

Auditory Impairment A student researching famous speeches in American

history Student locates site with only audio clips of many

speeches Alternately, the student finds a great speech that is

captioned

Cognitive Disability Professor who struggles with reading comprehension

understands much better through listening Professor listens to websites through a screen reader like

Kurzweil

Sakai

Mike Elledge

Sakai Accessibility Elements Navigation: Accesskeys,

skip links, headings Content: Titles, summaries Functional: Label For/ID,

Fieldset/Legend, Scope Presentation: CSS

Mostly Section 508/WCAG 1.0 CompliantJavaScript must be

enabledScale > 200% not useableJSF “Accessibility”Content scrolling (CSS)Miscellaneous “Bugs”

Natural language not identified in header

Code burps

Annotated Screenshot

Jump to Worksites (h1)

Jump to Tools (h1)

Jump to Content (h1)(h2)

(h3)

(h4)

(h4)

(s) (x)

“Table contains a list of announcements.”

Label for / id

“Sort by Audience”

Go to Accessibility Information (h1)

Sakai Accessibility Information Home Page:

http://issues.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/LgI

Review Protocol and Templates:http://issues.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/Wok

Email List and Archive:http://collab.sakaiproject.org/

Compliance:http://issues.sakaiproject.org/confluence/x/kR4

Repairs:http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?

mode=hide&requestId=10254

What’s Next* Eliminate last iFrame (screen resizing and navigation) StyleAble: User-specified presentation (font size, reverse type,

redisplay, etc.) Identify/Integrate more accessible open source text editor Enhance JSF widgets Integrate accessibility reviews with QA process FLUID Interface Accessible AJAX Sakai Materials Assessment and Repair Tool (SMART)

*Proposed (“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”)

WebCT

Kostas Yfanis

WebCT Vista(Blackboard Enterprise Vista)

UIUC’s Flagship Learning Management System1,100 courses31,780 unique students

Accessibility PartnershipCITES Educational Technologies

http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/edtechIllinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility

http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/

Illinois Compass Home

Sample Course

Accessibility IssuesExisting Challenges

Pop-up windows Java applets Missing headers & image

labels Others:

http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/collaborate/webct/problems.php

Improvements Heading structure Added alt text for images Expanded labels for form

controls Language definitions

A Proactive Approach Work with your accessibility team Collaborate with other institutions

Do the versions match?Can you involve the software developers and quality assurance

team of the vendor?

If you use WebCT, then join our grouphttp://www.cita.uiuc.edu/collaborate/webct/person.php

Desire To Learn (D2L)Joe Wheaton

and

Ken Petri

D2L Class Page (v. 7.4)

2 Frames, No Headings

Fangs Add-on for Firefox

OSU’s Web Accessibility Center

D2L User-Vendor Collaborations First accessibility audits by OSU Web Accessibility Center

Spring 2005 and 2006 Active collaboration begun June 2006 Accessibility panel at D2L 2006 Users Conference (UC06) Current round of evaluations on pre-production version (v. 8.2)

Looking at specific interfaces and widgets/tools Evaluations by “expert users”Using matrix of UIUC “best practices” (http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/html-best-

practices/) Semi-monthly teleconferences (http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/collaborate/desiretolearn/) Collaborations using Google Apps for document sharing (http://www.google.com/a/)

“Consortium” model for collaboration

Facilitating Remote Collaboration

Functional testing using UIUC “best practices” matrix on Google Apps

Current Status and the Future Improvements between versions 7.4 and 8.1

More consistency in markup of graphics (part of D2L build process)Some improvements in naming conventions of graphics and tools

The future: Usability testing (if improvements merit)

Conclusions All have many problems All say they are trying Much still depends on the accessibility of the content

developed by facultyWe need accessibility checks as material is uploaded

Keep asking questions of the vendors Get involved in the product selection The Big Question: Open Source or Commercial?