Supporting staff in inclusive online practices

Elaine Pearson, Director, ARC

Visiting Research Fellow,

Tony Koppi,

Director, EDTeC

University of New South Wales

e.pearson@tees.ac.uk

University of Teesside

ARC projects:• Accessibility and eLearning in collaboration with

EDTeC, UNSW (HEFCE)• LMS for students with severe disabilities (ESF)• Web accessibility support for small businesses

in the digital media sector (ERDF)• National and international collaborative research

in accessibility and eLearning (HEIF)• Mobile and wireless technologies; learning

objects and accessibility metadata; interactive and collaborative technology;eAssessment(ESF)

UNSW/University of Teesside

Accessibility and eLearning in collaboration with EDTeC, UNSW. Activities include –

•Analysis of student and staff experience

•Guidelines for accessible online learning

•Workshops, seminars, online courses

•Support website

•Guidelines for web-developers

Strategies for supporting staff

Need to develop empathy for the academic with the disabled student experience:•To enable understanding of the problems faced•To be aware of the need to make adjustments•To motivate a willingness to adopt new practices and develop new skills•To persuade them its worth investing time in

Your views

What techniques would you use to develop the empathy of staff with the disabled student experience?

Say “g’day” to your neighbour and brain storm your ideas for one minute.

Feedback.

Techniques

• Simulations (of effect not of disability):Vision impairment, blindness, physical disability, cognitive impairment

• Demonstrations:Blind student accessing a LMS

• Assistive technology:Hands-on experience to understand issues (not to become expert users)

Our approach

Empathise with the academic experience to bring about changes in practice:•Academics are busy and lack technical skills•Need skills in accessibility using familiar tools•Support must be timely, appropriate, targeted, expert where necessary•Incremental approach – do what you can, change gradually•Three elements to initial support:

– Understand student experience, hands-on with assistive technology, simple techniques using familiar tools

Tips we recommend Language: keep it clear and simple Colour: avoid using as sole means of transmitting informationFormat: use inbuilt heading styles e.g. heading1, heading 2Text: use san serif font with lots of white space and minimum font size 12Images: use descriptions (alt tags/captions)Navigation: be consistent, ensure hyperlinks describe destination

Reflection

Is it ALL or NOTHING?

Is it acceptable to have a partially accessible solution? e.g.

30% of a course meets W3C 1,2 and 3, the rest may have inaccessible features.

Is that acceptable in the context of busy academics doing what they can to meet the needs of all their students?

Supporting staff in inclusive online practices

Useful links ARC website:

http://rime.tees.ac.uk/arc

EDTeC support site:

http://www.edtec.unsw.edu.au/inter/support/accessibility/access_frame.cfm

Techdis, UK educational advisory service:

http://www.techdis.ac.uk/

WebAim, accessibility support site:

http://www.webaim.org/

Workshop: Designing accessible online courses and resources:

http://wanau.org/events/workshop-sydney.html

Elaine Pearson e.pearson@tees.ac.uk, e.pearson@unsw.edu.au

Supporting staff in inclusive online practices

Dr Elaine Pearson, Director, ARC

Visiting Research Fellow,

Associate Professor Tony Koppi,

Director, EDTeC

University of New South Wales

e.pearson@tees.ac.uk

University of Teesside