1. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Robert Wyatt, Director of Distance Education & Leyla Zhuhadar, Instructional Designer, Western Kentucky University
Copyright [Robert Wyatt & Leyla Zhuhadar] [2007]. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

2. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Robert Wyatt, Director of Distance Education & Leyla Zhuhadar, Instructional Designer, Western Kentucky University
Western Kentucky University – Bowling Green Kentucky, enrollment about 18,000
The Office of Distance Education (ODL) – provides support for:
~ 200 faculty
~ 400 online course offerings
~ 10,000 enrollments per year

3. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
The Story: How ODL efforts to assist faculty with ADA 508 compliance in their online courses led to development of multimedia and a captioning system for online materials. Moral: Good things happen to good people (Karma).
Accessibility/ Universal design
Accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities

4. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
The Story: How ODL efforts to assist faculty with ADA 508 compliance in their online courses led to development of multimedia manymedia and a captioning system for online materials.
Multimedia: Not just audio and video
Audio and video with annotations
Audio and video
Podcasts
Vodcasts
Powerpoint slides
Transcripts
Better than multimedia? Manymedia; all generated from a single presentation by faculty member.

5. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Manymedia solution for students
“Full presentation”
Vodcast
Podcast (not shown)
Transcript
Power point slides

6. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“Full presentation”
Software called Tegrity
Easy to use
“Natural Teaching method”
Creates Audio/Video/.ppt/annotations

7. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“Full presentation”
Software called Tegrity. Features:
Slide and timing menu

8. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“Full presentation”
Software called Tegrity. Features:
Slide Index

9. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“Full presentation”
Software called Tegrity. Features:
Search (any word on the .ppt)

10. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UCS-2" ?> - <ROOT>-
<SLIDES>
  <I T="0">Week 1 Familiarize yourself with Blackboard READ the Syllabus and course policies Week 1 Virtual labs (Intro & Pill bug) Study for Quiz 1 (M-W) Repeat next week</I>
  <I T="578487">Week 1 Familiarize yourself with Blackboard READ the Syllabus and course policies Week 1 Virtual labs (Intro & Pill bug) Study for Quiz 1 (M-W) Repeat next week</I>
  <I T="581562">Week 1 Post questions to Forum Repeat next week Good Luck, Study Hard</I>
  </SLIDES>
Software called Tegrity. Features:
Search (any word on the .ppt)
Allows Search for certain words

11. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“Full presentation”
Software called Tegrity. Features:
Printable .ppt slides
Much more (XML based)

12. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
Many, many recorded lectures using Tegrity.
Need for captioning

13. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
Many, many recorded lectures
Tegrity Captioning tool

14. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
Many, many recorded lectures
Tegrity Speech Transcription Engine

15. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UCS-2" ?> - <ROOT>-
<SPEECH>
  <I T="0">The data on inspector ever wider like to welcome you to buy a 130 in the market until a little about the class in general and what you need to do for the first week I hope to make one of the store Koreans every single week and I knew what she needed to put these recordings are really necessary or</I>
  <I T="18">The instructions and all the information will be red onion blackboard web site at first thing I could say it's a little sore need of this class is not work it's a lot of work I do this on my classes agree critique new students into what worked for you</I>    
Many, many recorded lectures
Tegrity Speech Transcription Engine
Expands search for certain words.
Transcriptions not meant for reading.

16. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
Tried other speech recognition software (direct from Tegrity recording to Software)
Requires training of software by user
Too many users and not enough time
Wanted to ease burden on faculty
Many, many recorded lectures
Tegrity Speech Transcription Engine
Allows search for certain words
Transcriptions not meant for reading.
Other means
Wreck a nice beach

17. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
Along comes Pocasting
Audio only recording WAS a podcast

18. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
“ADA compliance” - Captioning
Along comes Pocasting
Audio only recordings REALLY require captioning
Audio is a good accessibility tool for some

19. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Summary Part 1– At the end of the journey, accessible manymedia solution for students from one presentation.
“Full presentation”
Where audio accompanies .ppt with screen annotations

20. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Summary Part 1– At the end of the journey, accessible manymedia solution for students from one presentation.
Vodcast/Podcast
Podcast From Audio only version of full presentation
Vodcast from video portion of presentation
Enhanced Vodcast (entire video + .ppt)

21. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Summary Part 1– At the end of the journey, accessible manymedia solution for students from one presentation.
Printable Power point slides
Could be used with podcast.

22. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Summary Part 1– At the end of the journey, accessible manymedia solution for students from one presentation.
Transcript
Can be used with power point slides

23. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Summary Part 1– At the end of the journey, accessible manymedia solution for students from one presentation.
“Captioned Full presentation”

24. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Robert Wyatt, Director of Distance Education & Leyla Zhuhadar, Instructional Designer, Western Kentucky University
The Story: How ODL efforts to assist faculty with ADA 508 compliance in their online courses led to development of “manymedia” and a captioning system for online materials. Moral #2: Always an Opportunity to Learn
By deconstructing and captioning the Tegrity presentations we created a large and diverse set of learning media for the student that can be used in a variety of ways. The Faculty only create one presentation.
Leyla Zhuhadar – Doctoral student in Computer Science at The University of Louisville and an Instructional Designer for the Office of Distance learning at WKU. She will talk about the captioning system we built and how students use the “manymedia”.

25. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Building A Captioning System
W3C: Web Content Accessibility
Video files (different format)
Audio files
Provide equivalent text for every auditory and visual content
Browser files
Power point presentation files
(thumbnails images, slides images,…)
Closed-captions file
search files
Downloadable files
(PC, Mac)
help files
GUI files (Interface)
Tegrity Presentation Components

26. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Building A Captioning System
<ROOT>
<SYNC START="1000" END="15000">welcome to management 333 managing non profit organizations my name is Linda Johnson and I will be your instructor this semester for this course in the year 2000 I left my very comfortable surroundings on the hill at Western Kentucky University</SYNC>
<SYNC START="16000" END="30000">to create a not for profit organization called CITE the center for technology enterprise located here Bowling Green, Kentucky after three years this fall I of scaling creating and scaling a multi million dollar</SYNC>
<SYNC START="226000" END="240000">can be found in the staff section of this course.</SYNC>
</ROOT>
Closed-captions file (An XML file)
Using tagging format
Splitting each session into 15 sec (Trial & Error method)
Synchronicity between the Video/Audio and the transcripts

27. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Building A Captioning System
<ROOT>
<SYNC START="1000" END="15000">Welcome to management 333 managing non profit organizations my name is Linda Johnson and I will be your instructor this semester for this course in the year 2000 I left my very comfortable surroundings on the hill at Western Kentucky University</SYNC>
<SYNC START="226000" END="240000"> can be found in the staff section of this course.</SYNC>
</ROOT>
Tegrity lecture with closed-captions
XML-file (closed-captions)
Mapping XML-file (closed-captions with Tegrity Lecture

28. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Building A Captioning System
Writing a Java program An automatic parser which generates the XML-file (closed-captions):
As input: 1)Transcript file
2)Duration of the lecture (hh:mm:ss)
3)Increment steps (15 second) As output: XML-file

29. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Building A Captioning System
ODL Teamwork Diagram

30. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
How students use the “manymedia”
Web-based Educational Platform:
Tracking online students’ behaviors and their learning style
“Text/Audio/Video
/Subscribe (pod/vod)”
WKU, The Office of Distance Learning uses audio & video delivery technology to distribute online lectures to online students. This pilot project focuses on converting Tegrity lectures into Podcast and VODcast. Online students are given the option to stream the audio or video files, download MP3 audio files, download MP4 video files, read the transcript, view the power point presentation of the online lectures and even watch the whole Tegrity lecture

31. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
How students use the “manymedia”
Web-based Educational Platform answers to four A’s:
Automatic Synchronization
Accessibility
Availibility
Adaptivity

32. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
How students use the “manymedia”
931 individual log sessions
115 different students
6 different colleges
12 different courses.
shows the extracted information about each student session, which consists of StudentID, lectures that he/she picked, college name, the day of the week (Weekdays/weekends) time of day (Day time/Night time) and media style (Text/Audio/Video).

33. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
How students use the “manymedia”
Calculating the percentages of each learning style for each College over all the courses

34. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
How students use the “manymedia”
Distribution of each selected media style in relation to each student, and each College.
Distribution of Media style vs. time
Distribution of Media style vs. day of the week

35. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
How students use the “manymedia”
Conclusion
The reading learning style is not an option but it’s a core resource since:
the majority of students were using it
It makes our educational platform ADA compliant

36. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
User feedback… "does this approach meet students’ needs?"
Why did you need the transcript?
What benefits did you get after adding the transcript to the lecture?
Does adding the transcript improve/speed up your learning level?
Can you provide us with feedback about this experience?
I lost 40% of my hearing in the Army.
Part of the hearing loss I have is that a lot of words sound the same to me. Without the transcript I am sating there trying to make sense out of what the instructor said. With the transcript when I am reading it I don't have to worry about the word sounding like something else. I can see in black and white.
YES, plus with me if I read something I remember it better. I made three 100's in my tests.
Without the transcript I'm sure I wouldn't have made the B I made. It is better then a note taker. I believe the transcripts save me in this class.
Kenneth W. Chyle is an online student, who took E-Commerce & Operation Management course last semester

37. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Last Words…
Accessibility requirements are frequently disregarded as new technologies appear on the horizon and are quickly (too quickly?) integrated into the teaching process.
Especially for online courses, accessibility needs to be carefully considered to support diverse student learning needs.
Meeting accessibility requirements leads to greater learning possibilities to for all students.
Karma
A shared code with Manual are available on:

38. Accessibility Compliance in Distance Learning: Barrier-Free Multimedia
Questions?
Comments and questions can be discussed too on: