One of the best ways to ensure accessibility to your course materials is to think about Universal Design -- a concept in which things are made as accessible as possible to as many people as possible without requiring additional accommodation.
The Principles of Universal Design
The Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University has set forth the following Principles of Universal design:
- Equitable use
- Flexibility in use
- Simple and intuitive
- Perceptible information
- Tolerance for error
- Low physical effort
- Size and space for approach and use
These principles represent ways in which we might make the environment more "user" friendly from both a physical and psychological points of view. While some of these principles are more intended for the "live" academic setting, some do apply to the online setting, as well. This is especially true for numbers 1-4 and 6.
LCCC Recommendations for Web Page Accessibility
Shel McMahon and Joe Querin who do a majority of the web design for the LCCC webpage provided a list of "best practices" for web design, which have been incorporated into some of the ideas below. Many of these recommendations are easy to incorporate into your online course materials.
Navigation
In Module 8 of this training series, we discussed some of the important principles of navigation for the online course materials. Good navigation is important for all students who will be maneuvering through the online course materials. Being sure that your course navigation is simple and intuitive will be even more critical for your students with disabilities. This means that you need to think about:
- Providing good instructions for navigation: Be sure that you give your students clear directions in your introduction document so that they can visualize the course navigation as you intended it.
- Getting places with the fewest number of keystrokes: Having to click on 5 different things to find what you want is not very intuitive. That being said however, remember that having more than 7 items in the list can be a navigational issue, as well. If you have too long of a list of items in your unit or module, it may get cumbersome so considering the use of sub-folders would be a good idea. Just don't have a folder, in a folder, in a folder...
- Using effective and descriptive titles: This applies not only to pages and headings in your course and documents, but also to any links that you have within those materials. It is best to put a hyperlink with "Office for Special Needs" or "Click here to learn more about accommodations" rather than just "click here", even if you just finished talking about the Office for Special Needs in the previous section. In addition, providing a "large target" for your hyperlink (over several words, if possible, rather than a single word) will make it easier for students who have fine motor skill issues to click on that link.
- Be consistent and organized: It is good practice to use the same "pattern" when setting up the units/modules in your course design. For example for each unit or modular folder, place items in similar order, provide similar instructions, etc. This consistency in design will be appreciated by all of the students in your course.
Page Design
When creating your course materials, think about visual design of your pages.
- Use strong contrast between the background and text on each of your pages: Your best bet is to use black text on a white background. This provides the best contrast.
- Avoid excessive use of color: While color can certainly make something stand out, this should be used judiciously. Because some students are color blind (especially for red or green colors), use of the color may actually cause that to be less visible for the student. Stick with darker tones for fonts to enhance the contrast. The occasional splash of color is fine to make things look a bit more interesting, but keep it to a minimum.
- Avoid the use of "highlight" coloring behind your text. This impacts the contrast with the text and can make it difficult for even those with normal color vision to see things clearly.
- Use bold or italics to emphasize important points and features: Use bolding for only single words, short phrase, or a single sentence. Using bold for larger amounts of your document tends to reduce the amount of emphasis and also makes it a little more difficult for certain individuals to read the text.
- Avoid underlining on an html document/webpage as most viewers will think this is a hyperlink.
In addition, you should minimize "mixing and matching" of fonts and font sizes:
- Use font styles that are typically easy to read: Ariel, Helvetica, Times Roman, and Verdana are recommended.
- Stay with a single font type throughout the document: changing font type can make your page look cluttered. If you want to highlight something, use the bold or italicized version of the same font type.
- Use an adequate font size: 14 pt is recommended for html documents; at least 12 pt for word processing documents.
- Avoid numerous shifts of font size within a document: It is fine to have a different sized font for a header of a section, but changing font size within the body of the paragraphs is not recommended. If you want to highlight something, use bold or italics to emphasize it instead.
Students with visual impairments often will use an electronic screen reader to assist them with reading the textual materials in your course. When the screen reader encounters an image, it will have difficulty "interpreting" that component of the document unless there is additional information provided. You should use alt tags on all of the images found in your course materials. You can find the alt tag line under the Image Properties for your pictures. You can use your "descriptive file name" -- you might title the picture file as "reports page.jpg" which will show in the alt tag line -- and then provide a specific description of the picture in the long description line -- maybe say "Image showing how to access student grades in ANGEL".
Those students who are using the electronic screen reading software will get this "additional" information provided (both the alt tag and the long description) when the software encounters the image. Others (i.e. those who are not using the screen reader) will only see the alt tag line as they scroll over the image. They will not be able to view the long description.
Tables and Charts
Charts and tables can be a good way of organizing information. When students use an electronic screen reader, numerous issues with accessibility can become apparent. Screen readers process material on the page from left to right. Therefore tables should be arranged for horizontal reading not vertical reading:
Incorrect Table Format
|
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
|
8 am to 4 pm |
closed |
8 am to 9 pm |
8 am to 9 pm |
8 am to noon |
|
Lunch from noon to 1 pm |
|
Lunch from noon to 1 pm |
Lunch from noon to 1 pm |
|
Correct Table Format
|
Monday |
8 am to 4 pm |
Lunch from noon to 1 pm |
|
Tuesday |
closed |
|
|
Wednesday |
8 am to 9 pm |
Lunch from noon to 1 pm |
|
Thursday |
8 am to 9 pm |
Lunch from noon to 1 pm |
|
Friday |
8 am to noon |
|
You should use horizontally arranged tables for presenting your material whenever possible. Unfortunately, not all information will work well in the horizontal table format. For example, if you have 12 characteristics that you want to look at for 3 different processes, turning that table "sideways" is going to make it very difficult to view on the computer screen. One solution for this would be to create the table for best viewing on the computer screen and then create a "second version" as a PDF document with the table turned the other direction for those who will be using an electronic screen reader.
You can also add descriptions for your charts and tables by adding captions or descriptive sentences before or after the table in your document to help provide context for your students.
Moving Elements
It is best to avoid use of moving elements in your online materials unless they are needed to convey information. The movement can be very distracting for some learners (e.g. those with attention deficit disorders or those with visual impairments). You want your students to focus on the actual content of the course rather than that decorative moving element.
So in conclusion, keep your design simple. Make the content easily readable and limit the distractions. Keeping these important key features in mind as you create your course content will really help make your course truly accessible to your students, no matter what their capabilities.
