Accessibility Advice for Network Managers and Technicians

• Part 1 – Opportunities and Challenges.

• Quick Wins.

• Virtual Learning Environment or Intranet Accessibility Statements.
• Inclusion and Support Team Help Request Mechanisms.
• Personalising the User Experience.
• Text to Speech.
• Integrating user needs with security.

• VLEs and learning platforms.
• Training and support for technical teams.

• Part 2 - An accessibility audit for identifying areas of responsibility and co-dependency.

• Conclusion.

Part 1 – Opportunities and Challenges

The work of technical support teams has a wide ranging impact on the learner’s experience. The ease with which a learner can access curriculum resources, information and software can be a significant component of their success. For learners with particular access needs, the technical support can make the difference between accessing the curriculum or being largely excluded. This briefing consists of three parts:

• An overview of four key areas where technical teams have specific contributions to the organisation’s ability to meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and the Disability Equality Duty.
• An accessibility audit document to guide the process of identifying areas of responsibility and co-dependency.
• An online resource providing more detailed guidance on the themes covered in the overview.

Quick Wins

It is possible to improve accessibility without major investments of time or money. Clearly wider reaching and more substantial benefits can be obtained by investing appropriately but there are a number of ‘quick wins’ that most organisations can make with relatively little effort. These are outlined below:

Virtual Learning Environment or Intranet Accessibility Statements

Most organisations now have an accessibility statement on their external facing website. This is good practice but research by JISC TechDis suggests that this is not always as useful for users as it could be. Our recommendations are as follows:

• Both the external facing site and the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) / Intranet should have clearly signposted accessibility information.
• The information should be of direct use for learners – for example knowing how to change the size, colour or style of text is more useful than being told a site is ‘Bobby compliant’.
• The information should contain contact details for named people who can help where specific accessibility issues arise.
• The information should signal resources that might cause difficulties for specific access needs. For example, a blind learner may prefer to be told that a particular resource is inaccessible to a screen reader than waste half an hour finding out for themselves. Where resources of limited accessibility are used it is good practice to provide a contact person who could help provide the learning objectives a different way.

More information – see JISC TechDis/AbilityNet article at www.techdis.ac.uk/gettechnical.

Inclusion and Support Team Help Request Mechanisms

Where there are clear links from the VLE/Intranet to the services available to learners it is more likely a learner will use them. Online help requests have the advantages of convenience and privacy. Some organisations have created an online databaseservice of available assistive technologies and services. The learners can find what hardware and software the college has available on which campus site, how to request it and how to access training.

More information – see JISC TechDis/AbilityNet article at www.techdis.ac.uk/gettechnical.

Personalising the User Experience

Many learners like to personalise their view of the screen. For some the ability to personalise the font sizes, colours or styles has a big impact on their productivity – even to the point of including or excluding them from learning.

Personalisation can be achieved in a range of ways. At the very simplest level this could include a browser based plug-in that allows users to quickly alter the browser settings. These are available commercially at reasonable rates or you could try the free JISC TechDis toolbar available from the JISC TechDis website at www.techdis.ac.uk/gettoolbar (please note that the JISC TechDis toolbar only works on Internet Explorer). At the other end of the scale, roaming profiles provides a high level of personalisation. Between these ends of the spectrum lie a number of approaches to providing different degrees of user personalisation.

More information – see JISC TechDis/AbilityNet article at www.techdis.ac.uk/gettechnical.

Text to Speech

Dyslexic learners often form the single biggest group of learners with specific accessibility needs. For many, text to speech can provide a very effective way of accessing information. Text to speech programmes range in price and functionality from free software with good, basic functionality (see JISC TechDis website article at http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php? p=3_7_3) through to high specification commercial packages. Different organisations will make different procurement decisions but often these are based on limited information on the range of products available and their different implications for networking and licensing. By involving technical teams in the decision making process it is possible to provide a better mix of provision.

More information – see JISC TechDis/AbilityNet article at www.techdis.ac.uk/gettechnical.

Integrating user needs with security

For most technical teams, security is one of the biggest issues in their risk assessment; systems tend to be locked down to minimise security risks. Increasingly, though, the balance of risks is changing. A system that is locked down for security may be less personaliseable for a learner with specific access needs. Disability legislation has encouraged disabled people to raise their sights and be more ambitious about education and career choices, confident that they will get the support they need. Systems that lack flexibility may avoid security risks but may be more exposed to disability litigation. New risk assessments need to look broadly at both software and policy systems that balance learner’s right to reasonable adjustment with the learner’s right to secure, reliable IT services.

More information – see JISC TechDis/AbilityNet article at www.techdis.ac.uk/gettechnical.

 

VLEs and learning platforms

Most colleges have invested substantially in their learning platforms – whether VLEs, Intranets or bespoke systems. Two areas where technical staff have a potential influence include the following:

• Accessibility and usability issues – most learning platforms have accessibility imperfections. These vary in terms of their impact on learners but in some cases there are options within the software to change settings or allow learners the possibility of changing their own. The technical team may need advice from the learning support department or indeed from disabled learners directly. It is better to seek this advice proactively. In a worst case scenario an organisation will have better litigation defence from active policies than a ‘hope for the best’ approach.
• e-Resource guidance for teaching staff – digital resources are almost always more flexible than their paper-based alternatives so a key feature of an organisation’s accessibility policy should include encouraging staff to create e-resources. Technical teams can encourage this with reliable learning platforms with easy upload mechanisms. Conversely, teaching staff can be discouraged if the quality control measures for online materials are more stringent than those for traditional resources. This will probably necessitate two levels of accessibility guidance – one for teaching staff without technical skills and one for technically skilled e-learning developers.

Training and support for technical teams

If technical support teams are to make best use of their skills they need to be fully integrated into the core business of the organisation – teaching and learning. This can be achieved in a range of ways - joint training sessions with teaching staff on e-learning, technical staff attached to subject areas or technical staff sent on e-learning related courses, for example wikis, blogs, mobile learning, Flash content etc. By involving technical support staff in teaching and learning issues they can better understand the link between their expertise and the learner experience. From an accessibility perspective three further areas of training stand out:

• General disability awareness training to understand the issues facing disabled learners and the role technical teams can play in supporting a range of accessibility needs.
• Training on disability legislation and the steps technical support teams might take in reducing the organisation’s risk exposure.
• Training for supporting assistive technologies – e.g. screen readers, text to speech, magnification software, alternative input devices etc.

Part 2 - An accessibility audit for identifying areas of responsibility and co-dependency.

The checklist below indicates a range of areas where the technical team might legitimately have a role in supporting accessibility. Whether that role is proactive, reactive or non-existent may depend on a number of factors to do with staffing structures, expertise and organisational cultures. These will vary from organisation to organisation.

Critically, however, all the themes covered below are relevant to the learning experience of disabled learners and without appropriate input from the technical teams, some learners may be placed at a significant disadvantage as a result of their disabilities.

Accessibility Audit for Network Managers and Technicians Matricies (Microsoft Word - 80 Kb)

 

Conclusion

An organisation that implemented all the measures above would be a long way towards providing equity for disabled learners. In the process they would benefit many other learners. Different organisations will come up with different ways of implementing the criteria above - and different timescales for implementation. But organisations should have a plan, a time frame and clearly identified stakeholders for improving the accessibility of their IT infrastructures to learners. It is hoped that the guidance provided here and the more detailed guidance by JISC TechDis and AbilityNet (see www.techdis.ac.uk/gettechnical) will help move this process forward.