2022 Q1 Accessibility Learning

Accessibility is not new. I keep an eye on the Ally usage data and try to understand how course accessibility has been improved. I noticed that the use of Alternative Format downloads increased a lot from 2020 to 2021 (55.15% -> 67.06%). However, the use rate of Instructor Feedback and Fixes through the Instructor Feedback increased much slower from 2020 to 2021 (13.97% -> 14.38%). Obviously this does not provide convincing evidence, but roughly shows that course content accessibility has been progressed slowly, not as quick as we’d expected.

I’d like to improve this, but I cannot complain anyone. Even myself I need to keep building the accessibility awareness and habits, and constantly remind people whenever I notice a potential accessibility issue. After a quarter of 2022, I thought to revisit what I had learnt about accessibility this year.

First, do we all know what does Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1, level AA (WCAG2.1 AA for short) mean? Do we remember the 50 WCAG2.1 AA requirements? The Intopia WCAG 2.1 Map can be a handy guide to us.

Second, we all become digital content creators to some extent. Even though we may know people who will receive our information are not disabled/impaired, do we bear in mind to avoid accessibility issues in our generated information (e.g., SMS, emails, blogs, documents, images)? We could generate accessibility barriers for someone. For example, my blog is using the default colours from the chosen theme. The posts have contrast issues that I haven’t improved. I like the SCULPT guidance and the THRIVES guidance. Both provide a checklist for us to use when creating accessibility content.

Third, taking some training courses/webinars (or catching up recordings) is a good way of reviewing and revisiting my knowledge and practice. I highly recommend two resources:

• AHEAD provides ARK (Accessibility Resources and Know-How). The 3 free accessibility courses (Whole Institution Approach to Accessibility, Develop an Accessibility Statement and Digital Accessibility for Educators) are very useful. Even though it’s relating to Irish regulations, most information is valuable for people who work in the UK HE too.
• The accessibility with media and materials (including videos, audio, images, text, web conferencing, OER, EPUB) from a CAST project – UDL ON CAMPUS. I learned this from the EDUCASE Webinar – Universal Design for Learning to Support Remote Learning.

Last but not least, making changes immediately in practice. Last year, I have made key changes as follows:

• Add ALT text for images.
• Avoid long URLs and using ‘here’,’click here’ for links. Instead use readable texts for links.
• Identify table row and column headers.
• Create headings in documents.
• With PowerPoint document, check the reading order.
• Use Colour Contrast Analyser (CCA) to check colour contrast.
• Use Blackboard Ally to check my document accessibility before I publish it.

This year I started to change the following points:

• Avoid table split cells, merged cells and blank rows/columns.
• Avoid using PDF formats.
• With PowerPoint document, use a minimum font size of 18 points for body texts.
• Keeping text left aligned rather than justified.
• Use Readability statistics in Microsoft Word.
• Check the reading order for tables.
• Be more careful of using images that contain information.
• Use text to speech tools to read content out so that I would notice some issues that I might have often missed.

Becoming accessibility over a year

Since last year, there have been rapid increasing opportunities for us to participate in online conferences and activities in relation to eLearning. This kind of free availability never happened before the Pandemic outbreak. The good is that I have many upcoming options of learning opportunities, such as to learn the latest good research results, practice cases, recent issues/trend/concerns/discussions. I take them as CPD opportunities. The bad is to hugely challenge efficiency and productivity regarding my time and workload. Considering my time, energy and wellbeing, I have given up some. I was off twitter for about 7 months although I use Twitter as a rich learning resource. I had to tell myself it’s ok to miss some resources from there.

Looked back my calendar, and noticed that I have attended at least one conference/event that has included the topic of accessibility monthly since January. There are more forthcoming.

• January – Cardiff University IT Staff Conference 2021
• February –
  • Tech for All: our online accessibility conference (UAL)
  • Digitally Enhanced Education webinars (University of Kent)
  • Cardiff University Coaching Skills CPD workshop
  • HE/Public Sector webinar: How Cardiff Metropolitan University meets accessibility targets
  • Cardiff Science Festival
• March –
  • JISC Digifest 2021, Xerte Conference 2021
  • ALT ELESIG The Student Voice on Active Blended Learning webinar
• April –
  • Cardiff University Online CPD Spring School webinars
  • Blackboard Digital Teaching Symposium
  • ALN Global Festival of Active Learning
• May –
  • Cardiff University IT Technology Revue
  • Global Accessibility Awareness Day
  • Blackboard TLC Europe 2021
• June –
  • Blackboard EMEA webinar Culture of Inclusion: How to create a more inclusive classroom
  • ONLINE Kent Digital Accessibility Conference 2021

The Kent Digital Accessibility Conference 2020 was like yesterday, and I took some time to attend the Kent Digital Accessibility Conference 2021 (You can get all session details from this website). I have to admit that I have learned a lot from the University of Kent Digital Enhanced Education webinars and the Digital Accessibility annual conferences.

Accessibility is in my daily practice and over a year I have made changes as follows.

• Always use an accessibility checking tool (e.g., Accessibility Insights for Web, WAVE, Microsoft Accessibility Checker) to check accessibility of my document before making it available for others.
• Remind colleagues to check and improve accessibility of their documents if I notice a problem.
• Suggest people to be aware of the accessibility issues and improve content accessibility if I assist their online courses.
• Keep my knowledge updated and keep learning from communities and accessibility experts.
• Share resources in our internal community.

#KentDigitalAccessibility2021 was a super accessibility event. I’m grateful of the organiser and presenters’ effort and time. I was able to attend all sessions in the morning and one session at afternoon. Here I recap what I learned from the event.

First, there are many support that we can get to help our institutions to improve (digital) accessibility. Although I don’t work in a role of accessibility support particularly, accessibility is with everyone for everyone. This is not new from this event, but I found the Accessibility maturity framework developed by Alistair McNaught Consultancy and AbilityNet is a very supportive tool that helps institution leaders to define what need to change. I learned more from talks from Dan Clark, Michael Vermeersch, George Rhodes and Richard Morton.

• From Dan Clark’s talk, I revisited the two reports: Arriving At Thriving: Learning from disabled students to ensure access for all and Covid-19: Disabled Students in Higher Education: Student Concerns and Institutional Challenges. I learned the issues of accessibility support so far and checked my own support requests for accessibility. I think I received even fewer requests about accessibility from students and staff. I agree that accessibility is everybody’s responsibility as we all create some digital content every day.

• From Michael Vermeersch’s talk, I know that I have recognised Microsoft accessibility features and are using them. I recently encountered an issue of “Check Reading Order” warning in a file, which I found it’s time consuming to fix if it’s a complex diagram in PowerPoint with many animations on the diagram items. I was glad to see Michael demonstrated these features. Furthermore, I learned the Microsoft developed support materials. A diagram of how to enable accessibility would be useful for us to check how we have done so far.

• From George Rhodes’ talk, I learned findings of how Accessibility Statement prepared in FE. Again it addressed the “lack of initial individual engagement”.

• 

  AllAble finding VLE in FE

• 

  AllAble research finding mystery shopper

• 

  AllAble research actions so far

• From Richard Morton’s talk, I learned the mobile apps exceptions complying with WCAS 2.1 level A and level AA. It is an app or not an app. How to test mobile apps. What happens about non-compliant apps and sites, and CDDO resources.

The criteria do not apply to apps

Second, understanding student needs is key. I don’t normally have opportunities to work with students and see how they use technologies and know barriers that technologies/content bring to them in relation to accessibility. Therefore, talks like what @Paul_GeorgEnder and Wayne Wilsdon have given about their experience and thoughts are very welcome. This caused me to think two things below.

• They need to use assistive technologies. In the session I noticed that the camera facing Wayne Wilsdon was not in a good angle. However he wouldn’t know what was the right angle due to blindness apart from someone told him. No one next him could give him a hand neither. So I was thinking – Don’t we have AI technologies such as eye movements, face recognition and video surveillance? If the camera could recognise his position, adjust angle automatically and captured his movements for this presentation purpose, it would improve everyone’s online experience, wouldn’t it?
• I would expect in future there is a conference that only students as presenters to show us their accessibility awareness, their experience of the impact by accessibility improvement, their research and stories about accessibility.

Third, as usual, some new resources to read and take some into my practice.

• NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) screen reader application. It does not support MacOS.
• NADP COVID-19 Resource Hub (Coronavirus)
• RNIB Bookshare UK education collection
• GDS (Government Digital Service) Accessibility videos. “The accessibility monitoring and accessibility capability teams and functions have all moved from GDS to CDDO” quoted from Richard Morton’s presentation. CDDO refers to the Central Digital and Data Office.

Last but not least, apart from the University of Kent resources, I can’t recommend more of the JISC Accessibility community group and AbilityNet, and the Blackboard Ally user community (if you use the tool).

Catch up insights (2)

As I am not a teacher, I wondered how I would teach if I were offered a teacher job? With this question in mind, I finally revisit and carry on learning the Future Teacher 3.0 Talks (resources) over the Christmas break.  The rich resource indeed provides a handy guideline for me to refer to if I’d like to learn ‘how to teach’. [It’s recorded, it’s accessible and I hope it’s available even after the project ends.]

Very grateful that Ron Mitchell, Alistair McNaught and Lilian Soon have designed and facilitated the online sessions. I enjoyed this online learning particularly on the five aspects below.

First, I like the storytelling style which brought my focus into the session topic through an interesting story (e.g., Harold Houdini’s escape in session 2 and the singer’s Tarboosh in session 3). This is well linked back to session 1 (8/23) – ‘Elements of brain-based learning’ and proved the ‘Emotional’ element works.

Second, each session was well organised with similar pattern: introduction, pedagogic topic with research evidences, engaging view sharing, presentation, engaging activities, review, reflection, and reminder at the end. I can see all elements introduced in session 1 (8/23) have been applied in the session activities. It provided a consistent and coherent learning environment that reduces participants’ confusion and supports effective learning.

Third, it invited some practitioners to present their work and practice in the session (e.g., Using social media in Chemistry teaching from Glenn Hurst in session 8, a summative podcast project designed by David Beer in Session 11). This is a great way of sharing good practice and let participants to see how other educators have used technologies in their specific teaching area. With practitioners to answer questions, it stimulated deeper discussions and allowed connections to be built between people who are interested in the similar teaching activity/idea.

Fourth, participants were encouraged to share their work and contribute to the topic. This brought new views and discussions. For example, in session 4, Teresa MacKinnon was invited to explain terms of ‘information sharing’, ‘collaboration’, and ‘co-creation’, which pointed out the most demanding action is not only sharing information and working together, but more about sharing understanding and creating together.

Last but not least, the sessions own are excellent examples of how technologies can be used in online teaching to engage learners and simulate active learning. For example, Xerte is used to create the website and to present session content; Zoom is used to deliver the online sessions; Textwall and Padlet are used to collect/share/present participants’ views/resources; Tricider is used to for participants to share and vote views; and many more (e.g., mindmeister for creating mind maps, Audio Feedback Toolkit for creating audio feedback). I noticed that Zoom has a same problem to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, which people who join the session cannot see the resources(links) that have been shared before they join the session. The moderator needs to keep checking if newer participants follow and re-post the resources again and again. (To show resources in one place of a session without re-posting has been one of the highly required features in Blackboard Collaborate community.) I also remembered recently a University student told me that a lecturer took the assumption that all students have smart phones and asked them to use TurningPoint to answer questions without providing alternative options such as the website URL if accessing via a laptop. This made students who do not have a smart phone feel helpless. Clearly, the “The ironies of text” in session 5 and the session 9 Inclusive Practice are essential guidelines for us to avoid such problems.

There are many useful tools/resources for me to explore. I am unable to cover everything I learnt here. I listed some new tools that I had a quick look when they were mentioned the session.

• Zeetings A cloud-based presentation platform that allows users to combine their PowerPoints and PDFs with video, web content, notes, images and polls. Seems this is a powerful tool. I will try this one soon.
• Ipadio A podcast tool that allows record, upload and share audio to the web easily.
• poodll It is a set of tools for language teachers to build dynamic courses. I cannot tell how useful it is for non-language teachers yet.
• Hypothes.is The application aims to collect comments about statements made in any web-accessible content, and filter and rank those comments to assess each statement’s credibility. Very useful for peer review.
• coggle.it This is a collaborative online mind-mapping tool.
• SMOG Calculator It is a handy tool that helps you to check the readability level of your own documents or texts from a website.

I am sure I will revisit the site for time to time to check the case presentations, learning design checklist (session 1 16-20/23) and tools/resources/research that people have recommended.

Catch up insight (1)

Today I am able to sit down to catch up the ALT Online Winter Conference 2018 recordings (one of the enjoyable things on my to-do list over Christmas break).

I am glad to review the Johari window model, revisit my digital capability mapping (JISC Digital Capability Framework), and try the practice mapping template after viewing the session of “‘Mirror, Mirror’: working towards a reflective digital practice“.

Probably I came across Johari window back to my Masters study on Nonaka’s SECI Model many years ago, and then used it in a CPD training course to learn assertiveness four years ago. I don’t remember how I did it in that course, but I realise that such activities (Digital Perceptions tool), which is similar to the ‘skills audit’ activity I did in the Springboard course last year needs other people’s help, otherwise I cannot complete it right away. Although in the discussion part (@34:15), Dr. Donna Lanclos has explained Rosie’s case, I still wonder how much useful balanced views the person who I seek feedback from can really provide based on their knowledge of me online and/or reality?

I thereafter listened to the e-Learning Stuff Podcast #92: The Digital Perceptions Tool to learn more. This is not diagnostic tool, it is for reflection. Yes, it should not be a diagnostic tool, it should not be a judgemental tool. It said that the bottom-left quadrant shows what you have chosen about you but others don’t. The bottom-right quadrant shows leftover terms which are those terms that neither you nor others have chosen. Thus my understanding is that in Rosie’s example of the bottom-left quadrant is empty (Facade), it means all six terms that she chosen were chosen by others too, which should all appear in the top-left quadrant. As I can only choose top six terms about myself, and others need to do the same, I will not know the terms that I abandoned about me and others abandoned too due to the option limit, so these terms left in in the bottom-right quadrant and become Unknown. The interesting thing is some terms could be “Known to self” (in my perception) but they become displayed as “Not Known to Self”.

Blended learning course III week 2

To complete the week 2 was not as smooth as I expected because of some other unpredictable work. I went through each section and felt this course does not have as many comments from participants as the other two Blended learning courses. However, this doesn’t mean the course content is not well-organised. I am very grateful for the module providers and educators.

The key points of this week are digital content creation and collaboration in relation to the Digital Skills Framework.

We create/use digital content almost every day. It can be simple or sophisticated. I summarise a list of common skills and knowledge as follows.

Digital Content Creation Skills	Knowledge on using technologies	Tools / Technologies
Create/edit/publish/share images	image file types (e.g., .png, .jpeg, .exif, .gif, .svg, .bmp) editing convert file types backup embed html code elements	screenshot tool (e.g., picpick, Awesome Screenshot, Jing) image creator (e.g., vectr, pixteller) graphic editor (e.g. Canva, GIMP, Google Photos, pixlr) publish and store pictures (e.g., Pinterest, Flickr,Photobucket,instagram)
Create/edit/publish/share podcasts	audio file types (e.g., .wav, .wma, .mp3, .rm) recording editing convert file types backup embed html code elements	podcast generator (e.g., podbean, Audacity, PodcastGenerator, poderator) Player (e.g., PlayerFM, iTunes, cloud Caster, smarterPod)
Create/edit/publish/share videos	video file types (e.g., .mp4, .flv, .avi, wmv, .mov) recording editing captioning convert file types backup streaming embed html code elements	video capture tools (e.g., Panopto, jahshaka, splice, Camtasia, movavi, movie maker) video editor (e.g., wevideo, videosoftdev, videopad, FFmpeg) Player (e.g., VLC, SMPlayer, xine, RealPlayer) Converter (e.g., handbrake, freemake) share videos (e.g., vimeo, youtube)
Create/edit/publish/share websites	webpage files RSS CSS HTML(5) XML Web domain URL web browser	Text/HTML editor (e.g., w3schools, Online HTML Editor, Adobe Dreamweaver, NetBeans) website creator (e.g., wix, weebly, wordpress, google web designer, imcreator)
Create/edit/publish/share objects	presentation animation multimedia files web design	presentation tools (e.g., Powerpoint, Prezi) Interactive authoring tools (e.g., Xerte Online Toolkits, voicethread, h5p) animation maker (e.g., biteable, animatron, scratch)
Create/edit/publish/share documents	file types (e.g., .doc, .odt, .rtf, .pdf, .txt, .xls, .csv, .wps) backup	Windows Office OpenOffice Dropbox
Create/edit/manage databases/content management systems	programming languages (e.g., SQL) debugging E-R data structure software architecture server configuration	Programming Editor (e.g., Notepad++, SciTE, bluefish) Web Inspector on the web browser E-R diagram maker (e.g., lucidchart, smartdraw)

We share digital content with others frequently. We can reuse numerous online digital content created by others too (see free digital resources below). Copyright of digital content is the crucial knowledge. It is vital for we to understand what is free licensed online content and how we use Creative Commons.

• clker (free clip images)
• Stock free images  (free images)
• Pixabay (free images and videos)
• Wikimedia Commons (freely usable media files)

We use collaboration technologies widely too. It can be a group of people work on organise socialised activities, distant learners take a group work, researchers from different institutions co-write a book, or people undertake a project together. Many useful tools have been introduced in the course. Here I list a few.

• web conferencing and meeting tools (e.g., Adobe Connect, Webex and GotoMeeting, Skype, Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, FaceTime) You can communicate online either one-to-one or in a group.
• Twitter hashtags (A way of organising a discussion around topic and allowing people to easily follow through twitter.)
• Diigo (A multi-tool for personal knowledge management. It supports many features such as bookmarking websites, tagging, creating your own library of online resources, highlighting text on web pages, and adding notes to web pages.)
• OneFile (An e-portfolio tool that records and manages work-based training.)
• Mahara (An open source ePortfolio and social networking web application.)
• PebblePad (An ePortfolio and personal learning platform, where learners can manage their own learning materials in the way suits their learning purposes.)
• Slack (A Teamwork tool that supports messaging, files management and sharing, video communications and more.)
• Trello (A project management tool that can be used as a personal to-do list, or as a collaborative online tool for sharing and planning how a group of people work together.)

For me, there are many good tools, but the key is not the tool itself as it always changes and develops according to people’s needs. We cannot use one technology to help learners achieve the expected learning outcomes. It’s necessary to trail different ways of using technologies and find the most useful features that the technology can support for the learning activity.

Blended learning course III week 1

Completed the first week of the Blended Learning Essentials: Developing Digital Skills online course. Comparing to the previous two Blended Learning Essentials courses, it includes more learning design activities. Although it says 4 hours per week are required, I still feel it’s not enough. If I read all comments and responded all questions, I would double or triple the time.

This course focuses on developing learners’ digital skills for successful employment and modern workplace. What digital skills employers are looking for? How can education help students to gain the skills?

The University of Leeds and UCL have developed a Digital Skills Framework which includes four themes:

• Managing digital identity
• Managing digital information
• Creating digital content
• Collaborating digitally online.

This week is about the Digital identity and Digital Information, and the next week it will be more about the Digital content creation and Digital collaboration. One of our activities was to find the requirements for digital skills in job descriptions in our own area. Interestingly I read a tweet recently about “Learning Technologist” and “Learning Designer”. My opinion is that they have little difference about required digital skills but some differences of the levels of requirements for pedagogic and research knowledge. Linking to the course activity, I list brief examples between the two according to the digital skills requirements.

Digital Skills	Learning Technologist / Educational Technologist (job essential criteria examples)	Learning Designer / Institutional Designer (job essential criteria examples)
Digital Identity	Knowledge of ways to present information online for maximum impact and professionalism	Experience of using websites and social networks in a professional context
Digital Information	Knowledge and understanding of TEL theories, systems, tools, their varied applications and potential for innovative practice Awareness of issues related to the use of resources in an HE context, such as copyright, data protection, academic integrity, accessibility etc. Provide research, analysis and optimisation of all digital activities Ability to analyse and process data accurately To plan and manage the development of varied e-learning material, including video, webinars, self-paced interactive resources, and online activities.	Experience of administering content on a virtual learning environment or online content management systems Ability to evaluate and quickly learn new software tools. Experience of administering content on a virtual learning environment or online content management systems Good understanding of copyright surrounding the use of digital materials Have a good understanding and experience of web technologies such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
Digital Content Creation	Knowledge of tools for multi-media content production, including ideo and audio creation systems and associated editing and streaming technologies High level skills in writing and editing online content Knowledge of design and implementation of engaging online guidance, training materials and technical documentation	Ability to create and maintain digital resources for learning – including, graphics and video. An excellent understanding of and confidence with complex IT systems and multimedia content creation Reviewing and creating learning content for websites and other digital products including the content of interactive games, video, animation, apps etc.
Digital Collaboration	Excellent team working skills, able to work collaboratively to enhance service delivery Able to work in a team of multiskilled professionals.	Work in a supportive role within a team, collaborate with colleagues to solve problems and innovate Ability to create visualisations and prototypes/mock-ups for sharing ideas with colleagues

(Sources: jobs.ac.uk,  indeed.co.uk)

When we talk about Digital identity, using digital badges is one way to motivate learners to gain more skills and do better. For example, the Employability passport set up by the Sussex Downs College. Primarily, I hope educational institutions and employers develop more agreements on digital capabilities and issue relevant digital badges widely.

Some other digital skills frameworks (see below) are also useful. Basically for me, apart from subject knowledge, what we teach and what students need to gain are the skills that enable them to be adaptive, transferable, resilient and learn how to learn.

• All Aboard project – Digital Skills Metro Map (by NUI Galway, University College Dublin, the University of Limerick, and Mary Immaculate College Limerick)
• JISC Digital Capability Framework
• Open University Digital Skills Framework
• The 8 Core Digital Competencies (slide 10, by Grovo)

As usual, I learned new resources:

• Tech Nation 2016 Transforming UK Industries  – An annual report that said “… digital jobs and activity are becoming ever more important in traditionally non-digital areas of the economy.” Yes, I haven’t found a job that does not use digital technology completely nowadays.
• OneFile – a training eportfolio, an assessment software, a CPD tracker, a dynamic reporting suite and a virtual learning environment.
• Weebly – a free online tool for building a good quality website from scratch. I have seen Wix as a free online website-building tool due to advertisements.

Digital accessibility course – week 4

This week is about making web content accessible.

Although I am familiar with HTML in my work, I have to check my knowledge again by reviewing the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG2.0) and the Web Accessibility Tutorials. I am glad to read the difference between WCAG1.0 and WCAG2.0 too. I realised that I still make mistakes when using “alt” to describe image.

The WCAG2.0 provides 12 guidelines and 4 principles for creating accessible web content. As more and more multimedia resources added into our e-learning system, I noticed the guideline 1.2 “Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media”. It’s very useful and can help us to reduce accessible barriers when creating the online resources.

With WAI-ARIA, developers can make advanced web applications accessible and usable to people with disabilities. Reading the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG), I started to think if Xerte Online Toolkit (1) has made the authoring tool itself accessible, and (2) helps authors produce accessible content.

There are 3 levels of conformance:

• Level A (lowest): It is the minimum level of conformance, which means the web page satisfies all the Level A Success Criteria, or a conforming alternate version is provided.
• Level AA: The Web page satisfies all the Level A and Level AA Success Criteria, or a Level AA conforming alternate version is provided.
• Level AAA (highest): The Web page satisfies all the Level A, Level AA and Level AAA Success Criteria, or a Level AAA conforming alternate version is provided.

The important thing to know is that WCAG2.0 does not cover all accessibility problems, therefore conducting conformance checking of WCAG2.0 does not prove your website support accessibility to everyone.

The best way of testing a website accessibility is to combine the conformance testing and user testing as both ways have pros and cons.

Conformance testing includes two types testing below. However, it does not involve real users, but user testing may be time consuming, expensive and having difficulties to find suitable real users.

• automatic testing, which is using programming to test. You can use WAVE and AChecker.
• manual testing, which is experts inspection.

Through an example of improvement of a web site by applying the WCAG 2.0, I see the differences between applying WCAG2.0 and not applying it. It’s a good way to make us think about the online resources that we have developed, and what we can do.

Similar to previous weeks, I learnt some useful resources:

• The accessibility testing tools provided by paciellogroup
• WebAIM resources and tools for accessibility support
• How Many Test Users in a Usability Study? by Jakob Nielsen from the Nielsen Norman Group

What and How to Teach with Video – Week 1

The Digital Accessibility course I took on FutureLearn is very useful. It took my spare time but I enjoyed to learn new things that I can bring into practice immediately. I noticed a course “What and how to teach with video” on EMMA, another MOOC platform. I think it will be interesting and useful too as using video is so popular nowadays. Thus I decided to register. Although I was far too late, it’s still good to have the opportunity to learn it.

Firstly, I list some of the comparisons between EMMA and FutureLearn in terms of my experience.

• Both websites are easy to use.
• EMMA is beta version, so loading the course pages is slow.
• EMMA provides blog functionality. However, this blog area is not course-based. It is a public blog opening to all EMMA users.
• EMMA blog does not have spelling check feature.
• EMMA blog – Add New Post – New Post Content – does not support Font and Colours settings.
• EMMA comments do not support paragraph spacing, so make comments hard to read.
• EMMA does not have ‘like’ feature option for comments, and can’t reply to a reply.
• Both websites provide Progress for me to check. EMMA provides more details in one picture so I can see which one I have done, which one I haven’t easily.

The course has a clear structure and it uses videos in an excellent way because it’s topic is Teaching with Video.

The first week is about what to teach with video, leading to robust learning outcomes. It’s presented as four domains: Cognitive, Experiential, Affective, Skills and 33 Potent pedagogic roles. I watch videos every day and make videos occasionally, but never really summarised what I use video for. Taking this chance I will learn it systematically from Jack Koumi.

I really like that it has been separated between techniques (you facilitate learning by using video and you use video to provide realistic experiences) and teaching functions (what you try to teach by using video). At the beginning I was a bit confused between some of roles and a video example could play multiple roles. However, after using the guideline to check some of the videos I watched on Youtube, the 33 potent pedagogic roles do make sense.

Also I quite like the handout for each lesson, and the video in each unit was broken down by explanation and examples. As I registered late, reading other people’s comments are interesting. However, there are other languages in it, which is difficult for me to understand. I don’t know if EMMA can provide automatic translation for these non-English languages.

Digital accessibility course – week 2

I enjoyed learning new and practical things in week two.

I add two things of the course design which have given me good experience.

• It provides exercises and quiz in the section which are designed timely and not lengthy.
• People’s comments provide extra useful resources.

Technology can be very helpful. Human can design and create assistive technology to compensate for limitations relative to mobility and speech. I suppose this is “When God closes a door, He always opens a window.” Having a disability does not exclude people from discovering and pursuing their passions in life. The incredible examples are:

• Dr. Stephen Hawking has assistive software called ACAT,
• Musician Jason Becker uses vocal eyes (an eye-movement spelling system) to compose, and
• film-maker Simon Fitzmaurice uses the Eye-gaze technology to continue making films.

I have started to aware many technologies I never heard of. I listed some below. I thought I would be able to use these technologies easily, but actually it’s complex, especially I had to try them in some way that I don’t usually do. For instance, I tried the NVDA on Windows 10. I closed my eyes, and only used the keyboard to work out what a webpage looks like by listening to what the software tells me. It’s no success I could follow and find the information easily. Listening to the robot voice made me tired and annoyed too. The exercises let me see how technologies/documents/webpages have been designed without thinking of accessibility. Online resource creators (including me) can easily forget the accessibility guidelines.

• Screen reader tool – Job Access With Speech (JAWS)
• Optical character recognition (OCR)
• Document accessibility checker:
  • Microsoft MS-Word, EXCEL, PowerPoint
  • PDF (adobe)
  • PDF (freeware PAC)

The most import point of this week is learning how to make document accessible. Here are things I learnt particularly and I have started to apply them in my own document creation from this week.

• I never noticed that there is an “Insert captions” feature for an image in MS-Word. I often create an caption under the figure/image myself.
• Between Decorative image, Informative image, and Functional image, I felt I haven’t used the “alt” tag in the functional images properly most of time. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative tutorial is really helpful.
• Using”alt” tag for Group of images
• A mistake – using style (e.g, bold enlarged text) instead of proper headings
• A mistake – putting blank lines between paragraphs rather than setting the “space before/after” attribute for paragraphs
• The accessibility guideline provided in the course is very useful for auditing a document for accessibility.

Digital accessibility course – week 1

I registered the “Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society” online course, which started on 6th February.

With my previous experience of a software engineer, I knew that the good or bad of an application is largely related to how much the designers/programmers know their users. I took an “Interaction Design” course as a part of my degree many many years ago. I learnt how our own brain illusion can affect our understanding and designs. Although in my work I haven’t been involved in creating/developing products/applications any more, I see many examples of learning content delivered without thoughtful design and users complaining about the difficulty and inconvenience when use a system (including myself!). I hope through this course, I refresh my knowledge; learn this topic systematically, especially considering the disabled/elderly users, which I may not have enough knowledge of; and start to improve my practices.

This is my first MOOC experience. Because it doesn’t have a blog area in the course, I decide to write down my experience here.

First, I noticed the course itself is a good example regarding to digital accessibility. I list some.

• It clearly presents online communication etiquette and content copyright.
• It provides transcript for each audio/video clip. The transcript is easy to read and searchable. I can access to it at any time.
• It provides a glossary (downloadable) which helps us to check the vocabularies used in the course.
• The comments field supports editing and spelling check, which is very useful to avoid typos.
• I can check my comments and progress quickly.
• Video materials are downloadable.
• Audio materials can be set to play with different speed.

Second, the most mind-opening statements for me are:

• Professor Mike Wald said “Everybody can think of themselves as only temporarily not having a disability, because at some point in their life as they get older, they will have some sort of disability.“
• “… disability is caused by the way society is organised, rather than by a person’s impairment or difference. … An impairment is defined as long-term limitation of a person’s physical, mental or sensory function.” from Scope
• “The term ‘Usability’ is normally used to refer to the actual use of the technology by a particular target group of users and contexts (e.g. including whether they find it easy to learn to use). The term ‘Accessibility’ is normally used to refer to the use of the technology by everyone rather than just a specific group of users (e.g. including whether blind people can also use the technology).”  from section 1.6.
• “Up to one in seven people in Europe may have speech, language and literacy difficulties at some time in their lives.” from section 1.15.
• As Neil Milliken said that “everyone in an organisation should have some knowledge of the issues that affect one in five of the population”. I think I never even asked myself what is the issue?

Third, the new knowledge that I knew little about:

• I realised how little knowledge I have about the UK law/legislation. I learnt that “…only Accessibility has actual legislation making it illegal to disadvantage a disabled person through an inaccessible product or service.” In the UK, it’s the Disability Equality Act (2010).
• Everyone can influence their organisation. However, to be able to do so, it needs a hub and spoke, effectively, and champions. More importantly, it needs an executive sponsor who is higher-up enough to support companions.
• Subtitles and captions are different. I now know why Blackboard Collaborate product uses the term ‘captions’.
• Seeing the examples of people who have dyslexia, hearing impairment, deaf, visual impairment, and cerebral palsy, and the discussions about the challenges they face daily, I appreciate what I have. I started to see more of people’s needs and learn the existing technologies that they are using but I haven’t heard of.

Fourth, the course opens many resources to us. I am starting to think how much work I have been involved in has met the Accessibility standard, and how many of our current web resources follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. The new tools/resources that I can immediately use in my practice are:

• Digital Accessibility Resources list essential resources I need to know when design the accessible web content.
• Making your service accessible: an introduction explains why “you must build a service that’s as inclusive as possible“.
• Business Disability Forum
• IAAP
• ATbar  is a quick solution for web resources reading. I have added it into this blog.
• Sylvia Moody and David Grant’s visual stress checklist
• University of Southampton has developed useful materials like the Visual Stress Strategies, and they have developed Synote, a tool that creates synchronised online and paper notes and transcripts from lecture recordings. I am not sure how good captioning in the Panopto video/lecture capture tool is. It is definitely worth checking by my university.

Finally, I list a few inconvenient points.

• The learning resource links are not opened in a new window/tab. When click on a link, it opens in the same window, which if you are typing some comments and click on a link accidentally, you will lose the unpublished comments. You need to type again.
• It does not support ‘searching’ in the course.
• It suggests that 3 hours/week studying time are needed. In fact, I have spent much more time on learning course materials, reading people’s comments, posting comments, and digesting what I learned in this week. Is it because I haven’t been a student for too long? I guess if the learner has already had the background knowledge, they can learn much quicker than I did, but still 3 hours/week seems impossible.