The information provided on the WAI web site is of great value to online learning resource accessibility. However, it can be difficult to find and apply in an online learning context, especially for people unfamiliar with key principles of accessibility or the responsibility breakdown for accessibility across different stakeholder groups and activities.

This proposal is the result of work undertaken by the Accessible Online Learning Community Group (AccessLearn) to identify key accessibility knowledge gaps in the online learning community, and to identify where the information required to fill these gaps may either be missing from the WAI site, or present on the WAI site but hard to find or hard to apply in an online learning context.

AccessLearn proposes a set of content additions to the WAI web site to met the accessibility information needs of people working in online learning. The intention is to:

1. Provide additional information on accessibility that is directly relevant to a range of stakeholder groups in online learning
2. Make it as easy as possible for these stakeholder groups to find this information

The proposed content additions include:

1. A new landing page on the WAI site that introduces accessibility from an online learning perspective, providing context and links to other relevant WAI resources
2. Content edits to other existing WAI resource, to provide more relevance to online learning

At some future point, we may also suggest new pages, but this would be covered in a separate requirements analysis document.

The intended audiences of these proposed content additions include the following general groups:

• People who create online learning resources and tools for accessing them, including:
  • lecture notes
  • media
  • interactive learning activities
  • ebooks
  • assessments
  • educational games
  • specialist-format content, for example math, music, chemistry
  • learning management systems/virtual learning environments
• People who use online learning resources for teaching or for learning
• People who are responsible for procuring online learning resources that meet a specific accessibility standard

These groups may be represented by multiple stakeholder groups, including:

• Faculty, teachers, and other instructors
• Instructional designers
• IT staff supporting educational providers
• Publishers of online educational content
• Librarians and others with responsibility for purchasing/procurement of online learning
• Students
• Developers of learning management systems
• Researchers in online learning
• People providing support to staff and students with disabilities

Some members of these groups may be unfamiliar with key concepts of web accessibility and how they apply in an online learning context. Others may be more specialist in accessibility, but are looking for an easily referenced entry point to WAI resources to find relevant information and to share with others.

Note: The following examples are outlines, and will be extended as needed

• A physics instructor is looking for guidance on providing accessible alternatives for complex diagrams
• A director of online learning is leading a project to review current learning management system provision, and needs guidance on effective assessment and benchmarking of accessibility capabilities of candidate systems
• A manager at a publisher of educational material needs information on best practice for ensuring that online content meets accessibility requirements of customers
• A disability support officer is handling a complaint about inaccessible course material from a student who uses a screen reader, and wants to learn more about the relationship between web accessibility and assistive technology behavior
• An instructional designer is creating an online test on quadratic equations, and needs advice on creating accessible math content
• A literature instructor is looking for guidance on means to make a text annotation tool accessible.
• A science teacher wants to use an interactive game to show cause and effect with different variables but is not sure if the game will be accessible to all students.

We propose a new page for the WAI web site. This page would serve as a landing page that will:

1. Collate and present key relevant information on accessibility and online learning
2. Provide links to other WAI pages that have content relevant to accessibility and online learning

The goal is to provide a single entry point to WAI resources that are relevant to online learning, which can be easily referenced by resources directing relevant stakeholders to information WAI provides on accessibility.

The page will include the following sections.

• Introduction
  • Content describing the key components of the online learning ecosystem and their relationship to W3C accessibility guidelines in delivering accessible online learning. This could include a description and/or illustration of the scope of the ecosystem (responsibilities, roles, users).
  • Link to existing content: Essential Components of Web Accessibility
• Accessible online learning fundamentals
  • New content outlining diversity in profiles of learners with disabilities, with a link to existing WAI content: Stories of Web Users and Diverse Abilities and Barriers
  • New content on the relationship of W3C accessibility guidelines to best practice in quality online learning, inclusive teaching, including reference to Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
  • New content on how semantic structure, hierarchy, and consistency in instructional online design directly affect the ability of users to navigate and understand online educational content, with a link to existing WAI content: Web Accessibility Tutorials - Page Structure Concepts
  • New content on how best practice in mobile accessibility can enhance the learning experience, with a link to existing WAI content: Mobile Accessibility at W3C
  • New content summarizing the roles of authoring tools, the LMS/platform, and content in supporting accessibility from start to finish in online learning, with links to existing WAI content: Selecting and using authoring tools and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Overview
• Processes
  • New content on connecting accessibility evaluation methods into design, evaluation and remediation of online learning content, with reference to WCAG priorities and their relationship to learner requirements; links to existing WAI content: Planning and managing accessibility, Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility, Evaluating Web Accessibility Overview
  • New content on high impact quick fixes for online learning resources, which map to common issues identified as barriers to online learning, with a link to existing content: Approaches for Interim Repairs
• Specific online learning content types
  • New content on the role of multimedia accessibility in online learning, with reference to evolving use of real-time, time-based, and peer-to-peer internet communication that supports users with disabilities.
  • New content on accessibility of academic assessments provided online, the importance of incorporating POUR principles into their design, an explanation of how to describe visuals giving key visual data without interpretation, and an outline of possible exceptions (e.g., drawing) and need for accommodations. This can build on content on the same page that addresses accessible authoring tools.
  • New content on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) content accessibility, outlining and referring to available best practices, guidance, or newly forming working groups addressing accessibility of web-based math, images, and interactive and complex content; with links to existing content: W3C Math Working Group, W3C Web Accessibility Tutorials - Complex Images, Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)
  • New content on image description in a learning context, referring to the guidance and range of techniques available, including content on the context in which the image is used for learning (i.e., identifying what information is essential to the learning) and alternative means to provide information if current techniques alone do not meet that need; link to existing content: Web Accessibility Tutorial on Images

Notes:

1. We acknowledge that as the proposed content on this page is authored, the page may become too long and complex to be usable, and it may need to be separated into multiple pages.
2. We provide links to existing WAI resources that we know of, and that we consider relevant to the content in question. We acknowledge there may be other resources in development by EOWG that would be appropriate to reference from this page once completed.

We also propose a series of revisions to existing WAI web pages, in order to provide information that is of more direct relevance to online learning audiences.

(Note: We appreciate that some of the revisions listed may be applicable to other domains, such as electronic publishing or games design and development, so we acknowledge that an appropriate solution may be to implement a filtering tool that allows display of examples and case studies written for a particular audience or domain.)

These include:

• Stories of Web Users - provide some additional user stories of online learners with different disabilities.
• Diverse Abilities and Barriers - include more examples of barriers directly relevant to users of online learning.
• Developing Organizational Policies - include a section on the implications for and responsibility of vendors supplying to organizations with accessibility policies. The definition of vendors would include LMS providers, publishers that provide commercially available digital content, and authors of open educational resources.
• Web Accessibility Tutorial on Images - add more robust examples of complex image types, to include: photos, diagrams, graphs, flowcharts, image maps, art drawings, cartoons, timelines - and various techniques to make each accessible (alt text, figcaption, data tables, descriptions in other formats.)

As part of its work, AccessLearn CG may identify and suggest topics associated with online learning accessibility that could be addressed in new pages on the WAI site. This would be a separate phase of work, with a separate requirements document.

• Background from the AccessLearn W3C Community Group: Accessible Online Learning: Recommended Content Edits and Additions to WAI Website
• EOWG discussions:
  • 16 August 2018
  • 22 August 2018