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Creating better learning for all
You can do a better job with accessible e-learning authors. It’s not really your fault. The truth is, we can All Do a better job. We should strive not only to do the least, but to optimize the experience of all learners. How do you do it, and why should you worry?
Who really benefits from being an accessible e-learning author?
Google is asking this question and the first thing you will find is a list of disabilities that affect communication, learning, and technology usage. This usually includes visual, auditory, cognitive, mobility, and neurological disorders. These barriers to e-learning, which are universally accessible, are not as rare as some might think. According to a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in four U.S. adults lives with a disability [1]. It has an estimated population of 61.4 million in one country.
Separate CDC data from National Health Interview Survey [2] 16.5% of U.S. adults report hearing impairment (even with hearing aids) and 12.9% (even with correction lenses). This does not affect the cognitive impairment, learning disabilities, and tendency to worry about motor control or mobility, because accurate numbers are difficult to come by.
However, the picture is larger than those with permanent or chronic problems. Everyone has the ability to access your e-learning. It can help learners with a temporary injury or condition. It also serves those who struggle to access your content due to environmental conditions, including lighting, noise level, privacy, device usage or internet connection.
How do you optimize accessibility?
For an e-learning author who is truly accessible, you often have to go above and beyond the usual checklist. Here are 5 tips.
1. Use sensitive focus items in a logical focus sequence
Keyboard navigation is an important part of accessibility compliance. It serves learners who depend on the screen reader due to visual impairment, limited literacy or learning disabilities. It also helps learners who have difficulty navigating through a touch screen or mouse. You can meet the minimum level by ensuring that you have the ability to isolate (“focus”) all the important elements of your course course via keyboard navigation.
You should not stop there though. To make the learning experience as smooth as possible for all learners, you should check the focus sequence and ensure that the content appears in a logical order. Without screen reading software you can do this by tabbing across the page and looking at where the outline is focused.
If you are an e-learning author using content layers it is easy to change the order of focus of the content. The way these layers are stacked will directly affect the focus sequence and you will not think about it as you build.
The final step in your editing process should be to optimize the approach by rearranging the layer order. Layers are read from bottom to top. Layer-sharing items are ordered from top-left to bottom-right, so you may want to divide the items into separate layers or change their position.
Favorable advice: Stop using a slide-based / fixed pixel approach (or author tool) when planning your e-learning. The responsive design usually takes care of these issues automatically and improves the usability of the screen magnifier.
2. Add support text for screensavers
Visual and interactive elements are very important to make your learning content interesting and engaging. However, your content will be lost if you do not add accessible text that supports limited or non-visual learners. It can be a problem for learners with slow, small or expensive bandwidth. Adding alt-text is the first step in closing this gap. Be sure to include not only word-of-mouth, but also information that learners need from a picture.
What is a learner with a general vision of the image? Rearrange it from the text. . Explaining the use of keys in visual text helps students with visual limitations as well as those struggling to interpret visual data.
Interactive elements can also benefit from small instructions. Include this in the visual text when all learners can use the direction. When auxiliary technology requires specialized advice, some authoring tools are activated Support text visible only to screen users.
Favorable advice: If you are using an authoring system that helps you manage your content, the information you add for tagging / searching can often be used as alt-text for assets, and in some tools this is automated so you can write a good one. Description and benefits twice.
3. Optimize the use of colors and contrasts
Low contrast and certain color combinations can cause problems for the visually impaired learner. Of course, some lighting conditions can be a little different challenge for everyone. It makes the effects of eye strain worse. Therefore, whether or not you write e-learning essays that are accessible to your goal, you need to make an adequate difference [3] Against the background for any critical elements: text, images in the text and buttons in particular.
Another common motto of accessible design is “Don’t just use colors to bring information”. This is because it is estimated that 8% of men have some pigmentation (0.5% for women). Green and red are difficult for most people who suffer from color vision inency. Blue-yellow deficiency is very rare. Full coloring is still rare. The stop light is not as simple as avoiding red and green. Red-green coloration affects all shades of those colors, as well as browns, oranges, and purples.
What are the best practices for e-learning authors who can block colors?
Here are some:
- Contrasting to coloring, pale colors are more easily confused with each other and darker ones.
- Use color-coded charts and non-color alternatives in charts to distinguish datasets. Options include textures, patterns, variations, numbers, shapes, or labels. Often, these options can work to the main graph. This allows learners to switch to a coloring graphic when the chart is busy.
- In line graphs that cross multiple datasets, make sure all learners can follow each line path. Use line shapes, inverse ratios, or data points with different shapes.
- A red outline around the wrong format field should not be the only indicator of the problem. Activate icons and apply a background shadow or border. Error lists can be accessed by coloring and are useful for screen users as well.
There are tools that allow you to test your project’s variation and color accessibility, eliminating guesswork. You can also find the authoring tools provided to you WCAG compliant themes They have been tested before.
Favorable advice: If you use a centralized management system to manage your content, you can build these designs directly into your themes (skin) and make sure your team uses the “color” theme when developing content. If anything is missed this way, you can update the theme instead of single pages. If your system allows you to reuse themes, you only need to make this change once to update all content using that plan.
4. Provide full access to audio and video content
Audio and video files are a great way to build an attractive multi-module archive. Do not sacrifice these resources in the name of easy access – your content will be poor for that. However, you need to plan for access. Providing a text version of audio or video content is useful for learners who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have hearing problems. Anyone who can’t turn on the sound will be able to access their content. It’s crucial in an era where a lot of learning happens on the go.
Text options should include a description of any non-verbal but contextually relevant sounds (such as a bird call in a bird course course). It gives a complete experience to all learners. The audio-only clips are simple, they require a copy.
The videos are more complex. Closed header foot visuals protect access to visual content while also accessing videos. Video transcripts can be read independently, and serve as learners who cannot play the video as a videotape (for example due to bandwidth). Enhanced video transcripts describing visual elements allow students with blind or low vision to have full access to the video.
Finally, some authoring tools allow you to get it Interactive video transcripts. This makes it easier for learners to review specific sections. It benefits everyone! However, it does provide much-needed support for anyone with ADHD, learning disabilities, or sensory impairment difficulties.
Favorable advice: Do not be fooled into thinking that audio “narration” should be added so that a page can be accessed. Invisible people will often use screen readers who provide more information than a screenplay. Also, it is generally not recommended to play audio automatically for a number of reasons [4].
5. Access to assessments
When writing e-learning that you can access, you can never forget your assessments. Make sure you have access to your question types and answer plans. Dragging issues are usually not appropriate as most things cannot be used with a screen reader. Questions or answers that use image, video, or audio instead of text will not be universally accessible unless you take extra action.
You can use these valuation tools as long as you add accessibility features. At the very least you should ask alternative questions to demonstrate knowledge of that objective but it should be the final step.
Answers should also be accessible to feedback. Indicators for correct and incorrect answers alone are not visible, and your feedback needs to be positioned in the feedback information and in the correct focus sequence. Putting feedback in the wrong place will make screen readers feel useless or create unnecessary keystrokes.
Favorable advice: In general, drag exercises are not only good for learning, they not only meet accessibility requirements, they are often a poor experience on mobile devices. However, with recent developments, some authoring tools offer options for WCAG compliant and controllable drag exercises that are automatically compatible with mobile devices.
Use an authoring tool that facilitates accessible e-learning
If you’re committed to optimizing each course course for your entire audience, you need a tool that provides accessible content. Easy. Find a dedicated tool to integrate access to your standard content development workflow, keep you updated with Web Content Access Guidelines (WCAG), and optimize the e-learning experience for all.
Reference:
[1] Access to health care by disability prevalence and disability status and type among the elderly
[2] Disability and dysfunction
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