Week 11 Activity 4.1 - Evaluation Methods

I have done some testing of a few different resources using a few different methods.

1. I downloaded the Fujitsu Web Accessibiity Inspector and the Fujitsu Color Doctor and tested the website for the school where I work and an online elearning resource library that we produced as part of our outreach programme.

2. I tested the resource I made for the week 10 activity using the W3C Markup Validation Service to evaluate the resource and compared those results to the ones resulting from the Fujitsu Web Accessibiity Inspector.

I have used the W3C online validation to check website code in the past, it was easy to use and online content can be checked by entering the website URL or uploading files directly. There is also a CSS checker for external style sheets. It does a good job of checking that the code that is used is compliant to W3C standards. The tool highlighted a couple of small issues with my code which I was able to correct easily and then my week 10 activity passed the minimum accessibility requirements and I was presented with the code to add a W3C Compliance logo to my webpage.

I found the Fujitsu tools on the W3C WAI pages in their list of tools. They are free to download and use and were released in 2008. I chose to look at these because they were the most recent software releases in the list of recommended tools by the W3C. When I ran the same week 10 activity page through the Fujitsu Accessibility Inspector it alerted me to many more potential issues than the W3C validator had done. One of the issues it highlighted was that the colour I have used for headings and sub-headings is not considered significantly different in contrast to the page background and may cause problems for visually imparied users. The code that I had written was technically correct and I was impressed that it was actually checking for color contrast and so on. I shall be using this tool in the future.

The fujitsu Color Doctor gives you a visual representation of how a web page, including the graphics, would look according to different types of colour blindness. This was interersting as it gave me a visual representation of some of the colour/contrast issues highlighted by the Accessibility Inspector.

Week 11 Activity 2.1 - Evaluation Methods

From your reading of the set book and the introduction to this section, consider which approach or approaches you might take to evaluate the accessibility of the online learning resource that you created in Week 10.

When evaluating online content for accessibility I would always use guidelines and checklists as my starting point. Awareness of them during the building process means they can be applied during development and prevent issues occurring at a later stage. I would test for compliant code using a validator at intervals throughout the development process as it is easier to resolve issues at earlier stages in development than when the resource is complete.

I would also test their compatibility with assistive technologies by trialling them myself. This is unlikely to produce the same results as testing with disabled users but it may highlight issues that were not made apparent from using accessibility checklist and validation tools.

It is unlikely in my role that we would test with disabled users or accessibility experts. As a mainstream secondary school we have very few disabled students, however there may be occasions when we test resources for use with a specific student if it has been designed with their assistance in mind.

If we felt testing with disable users or accessibility experts was necessary for a particular project I would like to make every attempt to produce a resource that was accessible to the best of my knowledge before testing took place. Hopefully this would reduce the requirement for redevelopment and further testing and keep costs to a minimum.

Web Accessibility Guidelines 2.0: Better Than a Poke in the Eye With a Stick?

"The World Wide Web Consortium is planning to implement a new version of the Web accessibility guidelines this year" says Bill Weye of the Notes on Design blog in his article entitled 'Web accessibility Guidelines 2.0: Better than a poke in the eye with a stick' . "People smarter than I think the project is confusing, long overdue, and that the process of revision is broken," he continues. It would seem that even the people trying to improve the guidelines and make them less confusing are having trouble which begs the question what hope is there for the rest of us?

Wanting to investigate the other side of the story, however, I went to have a peek on the W3C website to peruse the version 2.0 guidelines for myself. Personally, I didn't have too much of a problem with the version 1.0 guidelines but things move on and they needed a refresh. Also from discussions in the forum for H810 it would seem that some of the terms were a bit ambiguous or confusing, particularly if taken out of context from the rest of the document. My first impression is that actually, they might be improved on version 1.0. The language is more technical but it also seems more encompassing, taking into account the advancement in technology since the original guidelines were compiled. These guidelines are not for everyone, they are specifically aimed at web professionals and not the casual hobbyist. They may need a watering down for the non-technical web content publisher. Something in the style of Educause's '7 Things You Should Know About ...' series would be useful.

The formatting of the page containing the guidelines on the W3C website however, is truly and deeply horrible! Really difficult to read in my opinion and in a nasty bullet point format. My verdict? Nice try, could do better.

Week 10 Activity 3.1 - Reflection on Creating an Accessible Resource

Why did you choose the particular topic?
The resource I produced was an accessible version of the first lesson in a Totem Pole module for the Art & Desing department in the school where I work. It is for key stage three students aged 12-13 years. I decided on the totem pole module becasue I was thinkning about some of the multimedia elements I have been involved in creating which ones could be made more accessible. I was also keen to try transcribing a video and the 'shaping cardboard' video that was produced for the totem pole module seemed a good place to start.

Why did you include particular elements?
I included a flash video. I used this format as the player is accessible to screen readers and navigable using a mouse. You can include in-video captions using flash video, and this is something I would like to try in addition to providing a transcript but I ran out of time. I also included some website links for additional research.

What guidelines did you refer to when creating the resource?
I referred to the W3C Web Content Accessibility guidelines becasue I produced the resource in HTML, like a lesson website. I made sure I included a page title, kept the formatting information in an external style sheet, provided alternative text for pictures, a transcript for the video and kept the page layout simple.

What areas were particularly difficult and why do you think this to be the case?
None of the areas was particularly difficult as I was already aware of the guidelines and have produced accessible materials before so I was aware of the techniques and processes involved. I did find the transcript was surprisingly time consuming. It took me over an hour to transcribe a video that was three to four minutes long because it needed to include a lot of descriptive information, not just a direct copy of the narrative.

Do you think the act of making an accessible resource affected the way that the learning outcomes were addressed?
In this instance the act of making the resource accessible was a case of adhering to best practices, the learning outcomes remain the same as the inaccessible version of the lesson.

How many of the decisions you made about the resource were influenced by technical considerations? How many of your decisions were influenced by pedagogical or other considerations?

The key decisions I made about the resource and the reasons for doing them are listed below :

1. Use of HTML. This was a technical consideration. HTML is an accessible method of providing online content as long as best practices are adhered to. It can easily be customised by users either by using assistive technologies such as screen readers or magnifiers or built in accessibility features such as making text larger in the browser settings.
2. Page formatting. I used size 12 font with increased line spacing and left hand justification and a pale coloured background. This might to assist users with visual impairment or learning difficulties. I also kept the pages short, linking to additional information rather than including it on one long page to assist navigation and understanding.
3. Video. This was technical and pedagogical consideration. I chose the flash format for the video as this claims to be accessible for screen readers and keyboard navigation. Providing a video is engaging for those students who are able to view the video, and also provides a point of reference for review of the subject later unlike a live demonstration. The transcript was provided as an accessible alternative.

Week 9 Activity 3.1 - Using Guidelines (Accessibility Lesson Plan)

Learning outcomes

To understand disability in an online environment
Awareness of assistive technologies
Develop skills and learn techniques for providing accessible content

A list of topics to cover

Difficulties encountered by disabled students (Hearing, Visual, Physical, Cognitive)
Assistive Technologies to assist disabled students (Screen Readers, Screen Magnifiers, Navigation Tools)
Basic Web Accessibility including:
- Page layout and navigation
- Accessible Text
- Accessible Graphics
- Accessible Sound and Video
- Accessible Interactive Media


Resources that you would use

Disability Simulators
Experimenting with Assistive Technology
Comparison of Accessible and Inaccessible content

Which method of teaching

F2F group session with online resources used within the session and available for review after the course.

The length of time it would take

One full day professional development session with the morning focused on understanding and experiencing accessibility issues for learning objectives 1 and 2 and the afternoon spent practicing creating accessible online content for objective 3.

Week 8 Activity 2.1 - Alternative Resource in Context

Write a list for yourself of the resources that are used by students in your context.

What media or formats are the resources in?

Printed materials
Online text and images
PDF Documents
Microsoft Office documents
Flash Multimedia
Video

Which students would need an alternative? Which alternatives would be an ideal solution, given unlimited human and technical resources?

Visually impaired students may need large format printed materials. Online text and images should be accessible if they have been produced according to guidelines. Recently created PDF documents should be accessible, where older ones may need to be reformatted. Flash multimedia may need to be accompanied by text or audio descriptions if they have not been included in the file itself. Interactive flash activities may be inaccessible to mobility impaired students. Transcripts or captioning of video should be included for hearing impaired students.

Which alternatives are practical in the context of the learning outcomes?

All of the alternatives mentioned above can realistically be achieved within the institution.

Are the resources readily available for your students at the time they need them?

Recently created resources will be accessible although reformatting or redevelopment of older resources may be required as and when they are needed.

Who in your organisation is responsible for providing alternative formats and any descriptions required?

teaching staff should be producing accessible materials for their students. They can approach the IT Support department (in particular the Web/ELearning Developer or Video/Multimedia Developer for assistance.

Is anyone responsible for checking the quality of alternative format materials?

Senior management are ultimately responsible for the quality of materials produced by their subject departments, assisted and advised by the Web/ELearning Developer within the IT Support Department.

Are there any copyright issues?

Copyright issues may exist when reproducing or making adjustments to third party content.

Week 8 - Activity 1.1 Alternative Formats

Make a list of at least five alternative formats in your blog. Use your own experience and any relevant notes from previous weeks to make brief notes for each format about its positive features, its negative features, the technical resources that might be needed to create it, the human resources that might be needed to create it.
Audio Format

• Converting text to audio format by having the content narrated and recorded is a good way of making material accessible to visually imparied people.
• If the audio file is not broken down into chunks it may be difficult for the listener to find the information they are looking for e.g. to skip to a certain chapter in a book. If information is only provided in audio format it would be inaccessible to hearing impared people.
• Most computers can be used to record sound using software included as standard and a microphone. Basic microphones for PCs are inexpensive. Professional sound recording equipment does cost more. The quality of the sound recording will be linked to the quality of the equipment and the environment in which it is recorded
• Depending on the scale of the project there may be need to employ one or more narrators. For professional sound recording and editing a specialist may be required to operate the equipment and to produce the finished audio.

Braille and Tactile Graphics

• Helps deaf-blind people read text and access computers. Electronic text can be converted to braille using braille display hardware. Can help to reduce the bulk of long text.
• Braille will be inaccessible to most other students and tutors unless thay have had special training.
• Braille display hardware can be expensive.
• Specially trained staff will be required for the production of braille materials. They can be produced fairly easily and inexpensively but unless the producer understands how to read the braille they will not be able to check for errors and quality control.

Captioned Videos

• Also called subtitles, captioning makes video accessible to hearing impared people.
• Although they are relatively easy to implement for new projects it may be time consuming to revisit archived videos that are not captioned to make them accessible.
• Most commercially produced DVDs will contain captioning and can be accessed using a standard DVD player.
• Staff trained in using video editing software will be required to produce captioned video material.

Large Print Materials

• It is easy to create large copies of digital material withough losing quality in the reproduction. The can be produced inexpensively.
• If materials are only available in hard copy and not digital format it may be more difficult and time consuming to produce large format alternatives. When whole books are reproduced in large print they may be cumbersome for the user.
• Most digital materials can just be printed using a large format printer. These are probably available in most institutions. Printed materials may be blown up on a photocopier although the quality of the material will deteriorate if copies are made of copies.
• Reprographics staff can print or copy materials in large format without additional training. It may be beneficial to make content producers within the institution aware of best practices for formatting large print materials.

Week 7 Activity 4.1 - Researching Assistive Technology Tools

I chose the following technologies for further research from the TechDis Presentation 'Assistive Technology Overview' and evaluated its main features, the cost of the technology and supplier training.

Talking Word Processors

• Word processors that have a speech facility to enable users to hear the words and sentences as they are being typed. Some also read toolbars and menu’s. They may have a word bank facility to make suggestions.
• Write:Outloud seems to be popular in the UK and can be purchased for between £31 - £71 depending on the number of licenses.
• ‘Getting Started’ manual available online. Also found some third party tutorials. I didn’t find any formal training courses for Write: OUtloud.

Trackballs

• For mobility impaired users, a trackball is a screen navigation device for users who find it difficult to grip a mouse or move it accurately.
• Various costs from £20 +
• No formal training required. Manufacturer instruction manuals probably available. There are video demonstrations on YouTube.

On-Screen ‘virtual’ Keyboard

• The primary purpose of a virtual keyboard is to provide an alternative mechanism for disabled users that can not use a physical keyboard
• Built in version with Windows OS, free version by MiloSoft, others include My-T-Touch from $99 and Comfort Software £9.95 (lite) and £19.95 (pro)
• Built in help files with Windows. No support from MiloSoft. Online documentation for My-T-Touch. Online documentation, email support and user forums supplied by Comfort.

Large Size Keyboards

• Useful for visually or mobility impared computer users.
• From £50, various suppliers including ITTools and Fentech Industries.
• Manufacturer instruction manuals.

Braille Displays

• Braille displays provide a refreshable tactile output of information represented on the computer screen.
• Expensive! Starting at over £3k for basic display up to almost £7k for larger or more feature rich displays.
• Manufacturer instruction manuals.

Hearing Loop Systems

• Reduces background noise for hearing aid/loop users e.g. can be used in busy public places, or at home watching the television.
• Portable or static hearing loop systems start from £130 +
• Manufacturer instruction manuals.

Week 7 Activity 3.2 - Benevolent Bill Part 2

I have just been trying out some of the activities from the TechDis presentation 'Impact of Assistive Technologies on the User'.

Using Microsoft's Built-In Assistive Technologies - The Magnifier

The magnifier splits the monitor into two sections. You move your curer over the original application window and it is displayed in the magnification window according to your magnification settings. I have never used before so I was keen to give the activities from the presentation a try.

The first was a seamingly simple reading exercise. Click on a link to open a word document and read it using the magnifier. How hard can that be? Well the first problem that I encountered was that when I clicked on the link to open the readin exercise a "Do you want to open or save this file?" dialogue box popped up outside the area I was magnifying so it looked like nothing had happened. Once I figured that out however, I was getting along perfectly fine with the reading ... until i had to scroll down the page. I moved the magnifier over to the right hand scroll bar and scrolled down a little, but because the magnifier was now focussed on the scrollbar and not the text i couldn't see how far I had scrolled and lost my place. I had to go back to the beginning and start again using the keyboard to scroll instead.

The second exercise was a drag and drop. The first problem I had with this was the format ... Microsoft word isn't exactly the ideal medium for a drag and drop activity. when you click to drag a label it dissapears (apart from an outline) and where I thought I was dragging one label I was actually dragging another and ended up putting it in the wrong box. I also had problems with scrolling again because the drag and drop activity was put together with drawing objects so I couldn't just use the up and down arrows to navigate (although now I think about it I might have been able to use 'page down'?)

Using Microsoft's Built-In Assistive Technologies - The Narrator

Narrator is Microsoft's built in screen reader for the XP operating system. When using this the first thing that I noticed was that I had made tabbing through the controls with the keyboard very difficult for myself by having lots of icons enabled at the top of my browser. When I finally reached the website I didn't realise I had got to them menu because the links were graphics with no alternative (alt) text.

I have to say, navigating this website using the screen reader was impossible for me ... even when cheated and I switched the monitor back on!!! I found it difficult to understand the computer generated voice, I couldn't not figure out how to get Narrator to read any page content apart from the links and I if I tabbed past the link I wanted I couldn't get it to go backwards. This page was completely inaccessible, very frustrating and the Narrator got pretty annoying after a while.

Week 7 Activity 3.1 - Benevolent Bill Part 1

I am currently running a linux OS with Open Office, however I read the presentation about microsoft accessibility features with interest. In a comparison of MS Word with Open Office Writer it would seem that Microsoft have some more advanced accessibility features than Open Office, which I suppose is understandable given the resource available to Microsoft and their closed working practices.

Open Office programes are completely operable using keyboard shortcuts, and these are quite straight forward to operate. I don't think it would take long to get become accustomed to this way of working. The interface of their programmes is also customisable so users can change default font size and colours, background colours, icon size and layout, mouse pointer properties etc.

I needed to consult the Open Office help guides in order to find out how to access various accessibility feature and I needed to do this using traditional methods i.e. using a mouse. A disabled person may require some assistance on first use to find out the accessibility features.

Introduction to Block Two : One Step Behind

I am just about to begin working on block two. Admittedly this is happening slightly belatedly, particularly as I was planning to work ever so slightly ahead of schedule for the beginning of this block. Unfortunately I was struck down with a very yukky flu bug during week 7 and was completely unable to look at a computer screen for more than five seconds at a time and then I was away on a week's annual leave so as everyone else starts week 9 I'm only just getting started. I am confident about my ability to catch up however, especially as I have been given a confidence boost after receiving my TMA grade which I was rather pleased with. (Although I was unable to unzip my feedback using my laptop. I have an asus eeepc with a linux operating system and the download from the etma system is a windows executable. I had to go and wait ten years for my desktop computer to load up vista before I could get at it!!!)

Looking at the introduction to the block on the course website it claims to be more practical than Block 1 which I am pleased about. I hope that means a little less reading and a bit more doing! I suppose there's only one way to find out ... so I had better get on with it!