Making Online Teaching Accessible: Inclusive Course Design for Students with Disabilities (Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning)

188 Pages·2010·2.08 MB·English

by  Norman Coombs

Making Online Teaching Accessible C
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Making Online Teaching Accessible offers online teachers, instructional designers, and M
content developers a comprehensive resource for designing online courses and delivering B
course content that is accessible for all students including those with visual and audio S Making Online

disabilities.
Grounded in the theories of learner-centered teaching and successful course design,
Making Online Teaching Accessible outlines the key legislation, decisions, and guidelines Teaching Accessible
that govern online learning. The book also demystifi es assistive technologies and includes
step-by-step guidance for creating accessible online content using popular programs like M
Microsoft Offi ce and Adobe Acrobat, as well as multimedia tools. JO a NG
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Including a wealth of helpful tips and suggestions for effectively communicating with E
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disabled students, the book contains practical advice on purchasing accessible course - n A
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management systems, developing solutions for inaccessibility issues, and creating training A g L
materials for faculty and staff to make online learning truly accessible. SS O ND
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“This valuable how-to book is a critical tool for all instructional designers and faculty who UI n G
teach online. Coombs’ many years as a pioneer of online teaching show in his deep D l N Inclusive Course Design for
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knowledge of the principles that can allow the reader to apply these lessons to any learning S n H
management system (LMS).” TO e AC Students with Disabilities
— Sally M. Johnstone, provost and vice president academic affairs, Winona State E
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University, Minnesota; former executive director of WCET at WICHE N E
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“As more and more of our social and professional lives come to be mediated by INE ac NLI
technology, online accessibility is a fundamental right, not a luxury. This book is a T O
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must-read for anyone concerned with maximizing access to learning.” A O
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— Richard N. Katz, former vice president and founding director, EDUCAUSE Center for C n T
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Applied Research I g E
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“This valuable book refl ects Coombs’ unique experience and commitment to the best A GU
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Norman Coombs is CEO of EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) and IN ib SS
professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he pioneered RIT’s O
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distance learning program in the early 1980s. Coombs is coauthor of Information e
Access and Adaptive Technology.
EDUCATION/TECHNOLOGY
www.josseybass.com
Norman COOMBS
Cover design by Michael Cook
Jossey-Bass Guides to
Online Teaching and Learning
Making Online
Teaching Accessible
INCLUSIVE COURSE DESIGN FOR
STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Norman Coombs
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Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coombs, Norman, 1932-
Making online teaching accessible : inclusive course design for students with disabilities / Norman
Coombs.
p. cm. – (Jossey-bass guides to online teaching and learning ; 17)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-49904-7 (pbk.)
1. Students with disabilities–Computer-assisted instruction. 2. Computers and people with
disabilities. 3. Inclusive education. I. Title.
LC4024.C66 2010
371.9'04334–dc22
2010026647
Printed in the United States of America
first edition
PB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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C O N T E N T S
List of Figures vii
Preface ix
About the Author xv
ONE Creating a Level Learning Space 1
How People with Disabilities Use Computers 2
Universal Design and Online Learning 6
Legislation, Decisions, and Guidelines Governing Online Learning 10
Decisions of the Department of Education’s Offi ce for Civil Rights 12
Review of OCR Decisions and Online Learning 15
Take-Aways from This Chapter 17
TWO Online Learning and Students with Disabilities 19
Accessibility of the Online Learning Infrastructure 19
Creating Accessible Online Course Content 23
The Students’ Part of the Equation 29
Take-Aways from This Chapter 30
THREE Creating Accessible Content in Word and Excel 33
An Introduction to Structuring Documents in Word 34
Creating Well-Structured Documents 35
iii
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Selecting Style Attributes to Enhance Accessibility 44
Creating a Table of Contents 47
Making Images in Word Accessible 48
Creating Word Tables and Excel Spreadsheets 51
Take-Aways from This Chapter 55
FOUR Creating Accessible Presentations with PowerPoint 57
PowerPoint and Universal Design 57
Designing Accessible PowerPoint Presentations 60
Creating Narrated Slide Shows 67
Take-Aways from This Chapter 71
FIVE Delivering Accessible Content 73
A Word about File Types 73
Distributing Accessible Word Documents 74
PDF Documents 76
Distributing Excel Spreadsheets 80
Distributing Accessible PowerPoint Content 80
Online Accessibility Checkers 85
Take-Aways from This Chapter 88
SIX Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math 89
Historical Issues with Math Accessibility 89
Authoring Accessible Electronic Math Documents 91
Issues with Technical Graphics 95
Providing Accessible Graphics 96
Take-Aways from This Chapter 98
SEVEN Making Multimedia Accessible 101
The Role of Multimedia in Online Learning 101
Creating a Transcript 105
iv
Contents
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Adding Synchronized Captions to a Video 106
Accessibility for Real-Time Audio or Video 112
Take-Aways from This Chapter 112
EIGHT Supporting Accessible Online Learning 115
The Need for Institution-Wide Support 115
The Role of Student Disability Services 119
Awareness and Skills Training 120
Administration Support for Online Learning 122
Take-Aways from This Book 123
Appendix A: Section 508 Web Standards 127
Appendix B: WebAIM Summary of W3C WAI WCAG2 129
Appendix C: American Foundation for the Blind’s Distance
Learning Survey 143
References 153
Resources 157
Index 163
v
Contents
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L I S T O F F I G U R E S
Figure 2.1. The Opening Screen in the Blackboard CourseSites ® System. 22
Figure 3.1. How Three Different Header Levels Look Onscreen. 37
Figure 3.2. The Same Text Formatted with a Style and Manually. 38
Figure 3.3. The Same Document Formatted with Two Different Templates. 40
Figure 3.4. The Word 2007 Styles Ribbon. 41
Figure 3.5. Modifying the Heading 1 Style. 42
Figure 3.6. Creating a New Style. 43
Figure 3.7. Adding a Style to Quick Styles. 44
Figure 3.8. The Styles List with a New Style Added. 45
Figure 3.9. Creating a Table of Contents. 47
Figure 3.10. Confi guring Your Table of Contents. 49
Figure 3.11. Adding an Alt Text Label. 50
Figure 3.12. Inserting a Table. 52
Figure 3.13. Tagging Headings in Excel. 54
Figure 4.1. PowerPoint ’ s Built - in Layout Options. 62
Figure 4.2. Title Slide Layout. 63
Figure 4.3. Title and Content Slide Layout. 64
Figure 4.4. A Slide with Poor Contrast. 65
Figure 4.5. Choosing Narration Settings. 69
F igure 4.6. Saving the Narration. 7 0
Figure 5.1. Word 2007 File Format Choices. 75
Figure 5.2. Publishing Options for PowerPoint Presentations. 82
Figure 5.3. Slide Tray Showing an Error. 84
Figure 5.4. Text Entry Field for Adding a Missing Image Description. 85
vii
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Figure 5.5. The Accessible Wizard ’ s Field for Fixing Errors. 86
Figure 5.6. WAVE Checker ’ s Access Page. 87
Figure 5.7. The Achecker Accessibility Evaluation Tool. 88
Figure 6.1. Publishing Accessible Output with MathType. 94
Figure 6.2. Displaying Equations in MathML Format. 95
Figure 7.1. Captioning Interface in MAGpie. 107
Figure 7.2. Camtasia ’ s Opening Interface. 108
Figure 7.3. Camtasia ’ s Open Captions Task Page. 109
Figure 7.4. Camtasia ’ s Output Choices. 111
viii
List of Figures
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P R E F A C E
The explosion of online learning is one of the results of recent
developments in information technology. Another is that, with
the access provided by assistive applications, people with disabilities
now have an exciting world of previously unavailable information at
their fi ngertips. This specialized software and (sometimes) hardware,
generally referred to as assistive or adaptive technologies, includes
software that magnifi es the onscreen image, reads aloud text from
the computer or Internet, recognizes spoken commands and dicta-
tion, or provides an onscreen alternative to a physical keyboard.
P eople who were formerly labeled “ p rint disabled” can now transcend that
designation because today ’ s digitized content is display - independent: it can be
presented in multiple modes, in whatever way works best for the particular
user. As a result, online learning has the potential to provide a learning space
that is fully accessible to the formerly print disabled without compromising its
quality.
I n my opinion, a major reason that more progress hasn’ t been made toward
providing better access to online learning for students with disabilities is because
explanations of how to achieve this goal almost immediately become bogged
down in arcane technical details. Administrators fear that the process will be
unduly expensive. And faculty fear that providing for these students will mean
that they have to become information technology experts.
ix
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