 Cheryl Bergstahler shares historical highlights and tips to create accessible online learning activities. What instructional designers and faculty should know about the accessibility of online learning courses. I'm going to share with you a little bit about access to online learning. What instructional designers and faculty members need to know. Often when I'm talking about this topic, faculty members will say, I don't have enough time, and then if it's not that, I don't have enough funding to get some support, and I don't have enough technical support for me. Well, what I can come back with politely, of course, is there are some things that we can all do. We don't need to do them all at once. We can do them incrementally, but make our courses accessible. That led to this particular publication called 20 Tips for Teaching an Accessible Online Course. So I'm going to go through that a little bit. It's part of our Access Cyber Learning Project, one of our resources for other projects. I'll just step back for a minute, back to 1995. I actually taught the first online course here at the University of Washington. That's kind of a little known fact about me. It was in 1995, and I'm still shocked to this day that they hired an 18-year-old girl to be offering these courses. But I was quite precocious, so I offered the class with Dr. Norm Coombs at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He and I had been giving talks on accessible technology around the country, and the University of Washington had a very extensive distance learning program, all based on the postal mail system. And so they mailed out things, including videos to students, and they proctored their exams in proctoring centers around the country, so it's pretty elaborate what we had here. And I wanted to make sure, my kind of somewhat hidden agenda was, I wanted to make sure that these online courses would be accessible to individuals with disabilities, but I also was kind of curious if you could really deliver a class online that was anything close to what you can do on site, particularly something like assistive technology, which usually people touch things and manipulate things. So I recruited Norm Coombs to teach this class with me, adaptive technology for people with disabilities. Now, back then, for those of you that are old enough to remember, people communicated using email, and we had discussion lists, email-based, and we had a gopher server, and the gopher from the University of Minnesota, of course, was kind of an online catalog system, all text-based. We'd get into a little outline of your resources, and then it would link to resources around the country. And we actually received an award for having the most comprehensive gopher server for people with disabilities in the world, and I don't know if we had any competition. But anyway, that was our course library. And we used TailNet, which allowed us to log on to NASA and other big computing systems. The students had to actually learn a different language to correspond with these systems with each one, because they developed their own interface. And then we used file transfer protocols to move files around to get images or whatever that we wanted to move around. So it was pretty basic technology. All of the materials that we had, we put in text format. You kind of had to. It was on gopher. So we did that. We did use postal mail. We mailed out publications. We mailed out videos. We'd do it. It was around. We had already made some do-it videos on VHS tapes, and they were captioned in audio described, believe it or not. And we mailed those out to the participants in the class. We kind of got the class pretty much together. I gave them Norm Coombs' resume, and they approved him as an instructor here at the University of Washington. And then it sort of came out in a meeting one time when we were talking about proctoring exams. And so what we really can't do proctoring exams in these different locations, because people write those out longhand, and Norm Coombs is blind, and so he won't be able to read those if they're not in electronic form. And I'll have to grade all those myself, and I'm really not interested in having to do all that work. Or we'd have to hire somebody to go over to RIT and read to him. Now I have to say that the program people were not amused by the fact that I kind of dropped this idea, this piece of information about Norm Coombs being blind. I thought it was a little bit humorous, and I really didn't think it had anything to do with them accepting him as an instructor, even back in those days. And so they allowed us to go forward with this, and we offered this course to be fully accessible, and the distance learning program, kind of the end of the first time we offered it. She said, well, tell me, Cheryl, after all this work, how many people with disabilities even took this course? So how do you know if it's accessible? And I said, well, I am proud to say we have absolutely no idea how many people with disabilities took this course, because we had designed it to be fully accessible. No one had to disclose, and so they weren't exactly amused, but we continued to teach that class, but I'm happy to say our first class was fully accessible. And then applying Universal Design to Online Learning, we provide multiple ways to gain knowledge, interact, and demonstrate knowledge. We have this publication that we created on 20 tips for teaching an online course that is fully accessible to people with disabilities. Nine of the tips are about webpages and documents, images, videos. And the other 11 are instructional methods. And when I'm working with faculty who are reluctant to admit that they might be able to adopt some accessible technology practices, I ask them to really take the challenge of selecting a few of these to make their courses accessible. And it really points out how the faculty need to work with the technology people, but also the designers in developing their online courses. And I'm going to go through these fairly quickly, but just to kind of give you an idea of what things we tell faculty members and designers to look for in online learning. Providing clear and consistent layouts and organizational schemes. That is something that every instructor should do to present their material clearly. Of course, those layouts should be apparent to someone who's blind. And so we structure the headings to make sure that someone can access them using ScreenReader and see the organization of the content rather than just jumping a bunch of text that would have to be read from the beginning to the end. So this faculty member would also use descriptive wording for hyperlinks, since someone using a ScreenReader might want to tab through and go to each one of the web resources on a page so they could see where they want to start or whether they want to go to those resources at all. And so if you use the wording on each of your underlined text, click here. That person is going to be able to read all of those, no problem. But what they will read is click here, click here, click here, click here. In contrast, if you provide descriptive wording that's underlined, that link, and it might say do it website, then that person would know what they're going to be linking to and can decide then if that's where they want to be. A very simple thing, this doesn't take any more time than putting the click here there, but it makes it accessible to people using ScreenReaders. PDFs, kind of tricky. We can make them accessible, but you have to ask yourself, why again was I creating that PDF? Sometimes you're forced to do it because it's a PDF that's out on the internet, but if you're creating a lesson or even your syllabus in your online class, do you want to include that as a PDF file or do you want to cut and paste the content right into the learning management system itself, into that window? And so it is text and then use the features within Canvas or whatever system you're using to structure the headings. And so you've made it accessible that way. That's what I do. The text descriptions of the content and images are provided. Whenever there's an image that's presented, you just describe that text and some learning management systems actually prompt you to do that. And so you're reminded, but even if it doesn't, you can put that in. So sometimes people will say, well, but it's just a little logo here. It doesn't mean anything. Why do I have to have the text description? Well, the person who's blind trying to access your course doesn't know that that image doesn't include anything really meaningful. For our do-it website, we have on our logo, on our website, we have do-it logo as our alternative text for that image. Some people would say, well, we should describe what it looks like. Other people would say, well, it doesn't really matter what it looks like. But it's important that the person who's blind knows that it's a logo, that they do or don't need to pay attention to. Using large bold fonts on uncluttered pages with plain backgrounds. With the PowerPoints we're using, we're assuming that their vision is such that it's difficult for them to see the content. And so we just automatically provide large bold fonts on uncluttered pages with plain backgrounds. High contrast color combinations. You usually can figure this out on your own. Sometimes you go to a website and it's like light green on dark green. It's like, what were people thinking about that? And to avoid the problematic ones for those who are color blind. So red and green for instance. There are resources on the web actually that you can test some of these things. So it's not hard to find. Content and navigation is accessible using the keyboard alone. Sometimes there's not a lot you can do about that. If it's the product that you're using is the problem. But if there are things that you have control over, then you'd be aware of that. But it's important to kind of remember that issue and to continually work by saying this Canvas work group that we have going nationwide. To give input to Canvas, Canvas creators and others about the inaccessibility of something. So it's good to kind of know that. Make sure that the videos are captioned and audio described. Captioning first, audio described is important too. But as I said, if you're creating your own video, often you can create it in a way that it's fairly accessible to people who are blind right from the beginning. That is going to take some technical support probably. You can read the content on our accessible IT website. But you might have to have somebody help you do that. Make sure that your course is designed for a wide range of technical skills. This is another thing that doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to do this. But so often we're used to using the technology we're using. And we don't tell students how to use it. We have to remember that even if you have some tech-savvy students in your course, they might never have used that product. They might be the first Canvas class that they've taken. So providing a little overview of the technology you're using to deliver that class and where they can get help, just include that in the syllabus or in the early instruction in a lesson or two. Make sure the content is presented in multiple ways. And so if you're using a video in the class, make sure it's captioned. Transcript is nice. But I also recommend that you provide sort of a different version of it because we present content differently when we're writing than is presented in a video. So many of our videos have a handout connected with them online. I guess it's not a handout, but it's a publication with that content. But it's written, you know, in a way that you normally would write that content. And so just because you have a video doesn't mean you shouldn't do that other. And that can be within your lesson in a class or it can be a separate document. So that's providing that content in multiple ways. The acronyms in jargon, we talked about that. Make sure you spell them out or don't use them and define them. Instructions and expectations make sure that they're really clear. Sometimes putting content in the syllabus that maybe, in years ago, I would have maybe given later because I think, well, this assignment's only going to take a week, so I'll give it in the middle of the class. Well, maybe it's going to take somebody longer than that. So give them the assignment at the beginning. They shouldn't be penalized for actually working ahead. Even if they can't do all parts of it, they can at least be thinking about it in terms of what you're teaching. And make the expectations clear, use rubric or use other techniques to make sure they know what they're supposed to be able to produce. Make sure that examples and assignments are relevant to a diverse audience. And so just sit back and think a bit. You don't have to survey your students. You can just think of a variety of people that might be accessing class. It might be an older student. You've got male and female students. You might know that people from a lot of different disciplines take your course, whatever it happens to be on. And so try to have a few examples of a concept that might be appealed to a different audience. Make sure that outlines and other scaffolding tools are provided. So that would apply to online learning. Be sure to provide adequate opportunities for practice. So in an online class, sometimes I will have something required, like required reading. And then if I think some people might want to have more instruction, or it might be just a little diversion on what we're talking about, then I put in all caps in the name of that lesson and in parentheses optional. And so that is a cue for someone who wants to do a little bit more. Feels like they need more practice or a little more information. But I'm not requiring that all the students do that. People have different levels of knowledge coming into your course, but also different learning styles. And it might take them longer or a shorter period of time to learn something. But also, people require more practice than others. Provide adequate time for activities and projects and tests. A lot of this, as I said, can be solved by just putting it in the syllabus. Another thing that I've done in teaching online learning is ask the program managers if I can open my class a week before it really starts. And I've always gotten permission for that. It makes it more difficult for the instructor, I'll say that, because you get students that start early and move forward. Well, I figure that's my problem. And so I don't want to discourage people from moving forward. Maybe they're going to be really busy in a couple weeks, so they want to get ahead. But I make it real clear what discussion we're on and when we're discussing a certain topic, so they have to kind of stay with the class in that regard. And I always send out a notice to the whole class saying, I opened this class a week early, so people would get started. If you haven't started, you're not behind. We're starting today. And so I kind of don't let the class get away from me, even if I'm letting some students work ahead. Providing feedback on parts of an assignment and corrective opportunities. And so if you're assigning a big project for a class, to at least invite students to give you a draft of what they're going to do and you can give feedback on it or part of it, say you're open to that. Or you can actually build it into the assignment and say everyone has to turn in an outline or whatever by such and such a date. So the students don't have that to experience where they finish the whole project. And then you look at it and it's like, oh, they didn't understand what I was asking for. And for options for communicating and collaborating and for demonstrating learning. So sometimes you can just give students options, say that the test is going to be, three different choices, you can present your knowledge in three different ways. Or projects, the same thing, you could give them an option for what project they want to do. Or another way to do it is to have just multiple things throughout the course. So because sometimes you want everybody to do things in a certain way. So you want projects and you want to have short answer tests and you want to have two and false and multiple choices and whatever it is. Or students creating videos or whatever you have in the class. Just make sure there's a variety so that if someone isn't very good at one of those things, they can still end up doing well in the class. So that's just a simple overview of what you can do in an online course to make it more accessible to students with disabilities. Not too difficult and not too technical. And what I challenge faculty members to do then, particularly the ones that say, well, I just don't have time to do this, is to look through here and circle a few things. Circle a few numbers of things that they can do right away. And no one has trouble finding them. But even if you just did a few of these things, given you aren't doing them already, it would make a better class. To learn more about how you can incorporate universal design in online learning, visit the AccessDL website hosted by the University of Washington. www.edu-duet-programs-access-dl. Or www.edu-duet-programs-access-cyber-learning. Copyright 2017, University of Washington. Permission is granted to copy these materials for educational, non-commercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged.