Creation of Learning Materials
Effective and engaging e-learning materials can go a long way to meeting the accessibility needs of different learners. This section looks at:
- the benefits of e-learning over traditional approaches.
- selected scenarios to explore issues around staff skills and accessibility expectations.
- sample approaches to making accessible learning experiences for different learners.
e-Learning compared to traditional approaches
e-Learning offers many distinct advantages over traditional paper based resources. These include the ability to:
- personalise font type and size,
- personalise colours,
- change magnification,
- personalise the pace of learning by accessing materials outside the classroom/lecture room,
- personalise routeways through materials using hyperlinks and,
- personalise access to support/extension materials using hyperlinks.
A very effective way of moving the accessibility agenda forward in an organisation is to ensure sufficient time and resources are being invested in upskilling staff in the use of e-learning. This involves more than simply improving staff IT skills. A much more teaching and learning focussed approach is recommended.
Scenarios relating to staff development, accessibility and resource creation
Matching training with skill level and responsibility
Within an organisation there is a wide spectrum of staff IT confidence. For those at the novice end of the spectrum it is important to demonstrate how e-learning can add to the accessibility of teaching and learning. This may involve simplifying some of the accessibility advice in order to make progress achievable. Scenario 1, below gives an example of this in action. Alternatively, some staff need much more rigorous accessibility guidelines as in scenario 2.
Scenario 1: Karen teaches geography A level. She has limited IT skill but is enthusiastic about supporting her learners in as many ways as she can. Her teaching groups include several students with dyslexia, others with low confidence in reading and several disaffected learners. With a geography fieldcourse imminent Karen decides to get some training in using a digital camera to produce short video clips. On the fieldcourse she talks through key field locations with the students and allocates a different student in each location to make a short video clip explaining the key features of the scene. Back in the college Karen learns how to load the raw video clips into the virtual learning environment (VLE) and during the fieldwork write up the learners are encouraged to refer back to the video clips.
Accessibility commentary on scenario 1:
The ILT champion in the college spoke with Karen before the fieldcourse and gave her training in using the camera and uploading video to the VLE. Although he had recently been on a video captioning course he decided not to mention this to her for four reasons;
(i) there were no learners in this year group for whom the video clips would be inaccessible.
(ii) Karen's approach was in response to a real accessibility need in her existing groups.
(iii) Given Karen's lack of IT confidence, it was important to avoid overloading her - she could easily have decided that videoing was too complicated if he insisted on her subtitling the student's commentaries.
(iv) This resource is very time sensitive - after the two week follow up work nobody will look at it again so it is highly unlikely to discriminate against any future learner.
The ILT champion's accessibility advice to Karen was limited to:
(i) the videos would be an accessibility aid to many of her current learners and,
(ii) when she loaded them on the VLE she needed to give a paragraph description of what the video showed and why it was worth looking at.
Scenario 2: Rob is the media technician at the same college with responsibility for developing and maintaining the media department's significant resource bank on the VLE. Working with several of the media staff, Rob has put together a video on compositional techniques in filming including excellent narrative content explaining the emotional, symbolic and perceptual impacts of filming from different angles. He has spent time making a very professional looking video complete with transitions, fades and background music. The ILT champion has seen the video clips on the VLE and asked Rob to redo them with subtitles.
Rob is not happy about this because there is no deaf student in the media department and suggests including a link to the script as a compromise.
Accessibility commentary on scenario 2:
There are a number of important elements in this scenario. This is a core media studies resource with a long lifetime. It is designed as a primary source of content (by contrast Karen's clips were reminders of an alternative experience). Whilst there are no deaf learners in the department at the moment the nature and longevity of the resource could seriously disadvantage future deaf learners. Furthermore, with Rob's level of technical skill he is very capable of adding subtitles and this should have been a higher priority than stylish transitions and background music. Finally, since much of the content is in the narrative, students working at machines without sound cards will be seriously disadvantaged.
Rob's offer to add a link to the script is a cop out because the nature of the resource is such that the narrative is highly time dependent on the visual effects. A transcript might have been perfectly acceptable with a "talking head" video cutting to one or two well defined scenes but in this case it would be a largely inaccessible substitute. The ILT champion would be advised to stick his ground and insist on subtitling!
Approaches to content creation
Accessibility is often a balance between contrary tensions. A text-based resource accessible to screen readers may be inaccessible to a dyslexic learner, a deaf learner or somebody with cognitive difficulties. An interactive media rich resource which suits the latter groups may be inaccessible to a blind student using a screenreader. "Design for all" applies more readily to passive content on websites than it does to active learning experiences in an educational setting.
Most teachers and lecturers work with a limited IT skill set to tightly constrained timescales and in these circumstances it is reasonable to consider how low tech approaches to e-learning can enhance accessibility for target groups. Many of the techniques outlined in the links below will improve accessibility for one target group but not necessarily all groups. The notes give suggestions as to who might benefit from different approaches and how the needs of other learners might be accommodated. These approaches can give teachers flexibility to adapt resources to many different types of learner needs without needing a high degree of IT skill.
The links below are geared to teachers or lecturers wanting to extend their repertoire of accessible teaching approaches without having to learn new software or develop much technical expertise.
Resources
Use the following links to explore a range of themes relating to the creation of accessible e-learning materials.
Accessibility in learning guidelines
Accessibility Essentials Series
Xerte Learning Object Development Tool
Using images effectively
Using sound effectively
Accessibility Dos and Donts for beginners
Accessibility potential of word processing software
Accessibility potential of presentation software
Adding accessibility value to existing resources
Accessibility perspectives on e-learning
