Voluntary Guidelines for Accessible Distance Education GRADE Leadership Institute August 2005 Atlanta, Georgia

GRADE Funding and Copyright Funded by the Office of Post Secondary Education (OPE) at the U.S. Department of Education under Grant #P333A ©2002 All Rights Reserved, Georgia Tech Research Corporation.

About GRADE GRADE’s mission is to provide resources and training to improve the accessibility of online education.

About GRADE GRADE works in partnership with MERLOT to address the issues of online learning objects. One such initiative is the creation of voluntary guidelines for accessible learning objects.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Institutes of higher learning are steadily shifting the delivery of courses from more traditional teaching to online distance learning methods.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? According to a 2003 report from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), in the 2000–2001 academic year, there were approximately 3,077,000 students enrolled in all distance education courses offered by 2-year and 4-year institutions in the United States.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? These institutions offered an estimated 127,400 different distance education courses on the undergraduate and graduate levels.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? As distance education becomes more and more prevalent, the needs of students with disabilities may be overlooked.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? A 1999 NCES study showed that 6% of the undergraduate population had some form of disability, and that percentage will continue to grow as students with disabilities receive increasing accommodations at the elementary and secondary levels.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? The design of many online learning courses erects barriers to the full participation of students and instructors with some types of disabilities.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Example - A 2003 NCES study found that only 18% of institutions surveyed reported that they followed established accessibility guidelines for their websites.

Does the Law Require it? Short answer - No single law or court decision requires educators to provide online courses in a format that is accessible to students with disabilities.

Does the Law Require it? Instead, a patchwork of federal laws— some of them passed before the advent of the Internet — apply to online education in various ways.

Relevant Laws Examples: –Section 504 of the Rehabilitaton Act (1973) –Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) –Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (1998)

Relevant Laws Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act - requires that institutions with federal funding not exclude or discriminate against people with disabilities.

Relevant Laws Americans with Disabilities Act - prohibits discrimination or unequal access to services. The ADA also requires equivalent communication, which the Department of Justice has interpreted as applying to internet communication.

Relevant Laws Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act - requires federal departments or agencies to provide accessible electronic and information technology to employees and the public seeking information or services from the agency.

Relevant Laws Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act - includes standards ( but they only apply directly to federal entities. In addition, they do not cover many of the file formats most-used in distance education.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Of primary concern is the integration of existing information technology – such as Internet sites, spreadsheets, or video lectures – with assistive technology devices utilized by people with disabilities.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Assistive technology alone does not remove all access barriers in online education.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? While assistive technology can help provide increased access to computers, online learning offerings must be designed to work with assistive technology devices – such as screen readers, alternative keyboards, and switches – to be fully accessible to students with disabilities.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? This has two important implications for online instructors.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? First, instructors with courses or modules that have already been developed and that are available for students should be reviewed for accessibility, and if need be, retrofitted to accommodate students with disabilities.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Second, instructors working to develop new courses or modules should be aware of accessibility issues and work to ensure that their products are universally- designed to provide the greatest level of usability for all students.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? As a plus - designing online courses that are accessible to students with disabilities results in courses that are easier to use and understand for everyone.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? For example, accessible online courses that provide alternative text with images can allow students to search for key words and phrases.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Captioned videos may help students whose instructor’s primary language differs from others in the class and whose speech is not easy to understand. They can also help students who are taking courses in a non-primary language.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Accessible courses are more compatible with many browsing devices, such as wireless handheld computers, as well as with emerging semantic web technologies, such as style sheets and extendable markup.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? But teachers, instructional designers and others often do not know how to design or retrofit courses to increase accessibility.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? Guidelines for this process exist, but they are not uniform. They are often hard to find and vary widely between applications – requiring significant study effort to learn each new approach.

The Problem – Why Guidelines? A set of guidelines following a consistent structure, and covering the most- frequently used types of material in online courses, can assist instructors to create more accessible learning objects. Consistent structure will require less learning time and promote efficient development.

The Guidelines GRADE discovered that post-secondary education courses often use the following technologies/applications: –HTML –Adobe PDF –Macromedia Flash

The Guidelines –Microsoft Excel –Microsoft PowerPoint –Microsoft Word –Video

The Guidelines The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) ( are a voluntary set of guidelines for HTML accessibility.

The Guidelines They have proven utility and flexibility, and have influenced other widely used “standards” such as the Section 508 regulations ( and the Adobe PDF Solutions for Accessibility ( olutionsacc.html). olutionsacc.html

The Guidelines GRADE used the WCAG structure as a basis for its guidelines, and applied the WCAG principles to the “second generation” applications most used by instructors.

The Guidelines Our goals: –The guidelines must address “second generation” accessibility. –They must address different disability types. –They must address different products. –The guidelines must address different priorities.

The Guidelines The result – a three-tiered approach that includes practical techniques and tips for greater usability. –“Must” – items critical to basic access for people with disabilities –“Should” – items that can make access significantly easier –“May” – items that can provide added functionality for people with disabilities.

The Guidelines Let’s take a look at one set of the draft guidelines …

The Guidelines PowerPoint Examples –Bad - w_files/frame.html w_files/frame.html –Good -

The Guidelines Video Example –“Math is Everywhere”

The Guidelines More examples of files that illustrate use of the guidelines can be found at

The Guidelines Please give us feedback on these guidelines. –Are they easy to use? –Effective? –Do they cover the topics you need?

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