34 authoring tools

AUTHORING TOOLS FEATURES TO SUPPORT E-‐LEARNING RESOURCE CREATION FIXED TO

ACCESIBILITY GUIDELINES: FROM A CRITICAL VIEW

Ludy Gélvez, Juan Sáenz, Silvia Baldiris, Ramón Fabregat

Accessibility Reaching Everywhere – AEGIS Workshop and InternaVonal Conference – Brussels, Belgium 28-‐30 November 2011

ALTER-‐NATIVA Project

Programa de cooperación entre Ins;tuciones de Educación Superior de la Unión Europea y

América La;na (Alfa III).

“Referentes curriculares con incorporación tecnológica para facultades de educación en las áreas e lenguaje, matemá;cas y ciencias para atender poblaciones en contextos de diversidad”


ALTER-‐NATIVA

Curricular Guidelines

AdapVve Infrastructure

Network

IntegraVon Guidelines

Accessible Repository

ValidaVon

Hearing Limita;ons

Visual Impairment

Mul;lingualism

Limited Access to Technology

APen;on Deficit

ALTER-‐NATIVA Popula;ons


ALTER-‐NATIVA

Curricular Guidelines

AdapVve Infrastructure

Network

IntegraVon Guidelines

Accessible Repository

ValidaVon

Some problems to aPack!

•  Adequate Author Tools to support the teacher design task in the context of a virtual learning environment.

•  Adequate tools to support the reuse of learning objects in the design task of learning experience.

Programa de cooperación entre Ins;tuciones de Educación Superior de la Unión Europea y

América La;na (Alfa III).

Some Problems to aPack!

•  Technical Evalua;on of eXe

•  Technical Evalua;on of LO over distributed learning objects repositories.

exe Technical Evalua;on •  1. Valida;on of W3C technologies (priori;es 1 and 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  2. Frames (priori;es 1 and 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  3. Forms (priori;es 1 and 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  4. Textual alterna;ves to mul;media elements (priority 1 in WCAG

1.0.) •  5. Headers (priority 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  6. Rela;ve units in the style sheet (priori;es 1 and 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  7. Comprehensible links (priority 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  8. Contrast (priority 2 for the images in WCAG 1.0). •  9. Seman;c use of colors (priority 1 in WCAG 1.0). •  10. Content alignment of tables (priority 2 in WCAG 1.0). •  11. Data tables (priority 1 in WCAG 1.0). •  12. Scripts (priority 1 in WCAG 1.0).

Conclusions about eXe •  It was observed that eXe-‐Learning does not correctly use style sheets, because it not formally validate the HTML code generated or maybe it not complete a correct coding in the style sheets.

•  The automa;c genera;on of frames to layout the content is done incorrectly. In this case the frame has a name, but it has been generated automa;cally and it is not related to its own content. Unfortunately, this cannot be corrected in eXe without directly modifying the API of the content generator, wriPen in Python programming language.

Conclusions about eXe

•  The accessibility of forms created by eXe was evaluated. Some ac;vi;es of different types were created (ques;on type, format fields), which in case they are not correctly labeled then they could establish accessibility barriers. Forms are a basic element in LMS contents, they support the interac;on of the user and the service intended to be used. In the case of eXe-‐Learning, the forms generated do not meet with the specifica;ons of accessibility guidelines. The solu)on lies in the modifica)on of the source code of eXe.

Conclusions about eXe

•  On the other hand, eXe’s HTML editor does not allow a correct use of the sec;on headers. The correct usage of headers eases the naviga;on of contents and allows for seman;c structure in the web page’s contents. The elements h1, h2… h6 must be used to provide said structure and must be used following the internal hierarchy (without skipping, for example, from h2 to h4 without providing a header h3 in between).

Conclusions about eXe •  The links generated can be formaPed in an accessible form with the HTML editor of eXe. Considering accessibility, it is fundamental that the text and/or image that make up a link, meets its objec;ve autonomously. An adequate text or an image with an alterna;ve descrip;on guided in each link is fundamental because some users only look at this element of the Web to access informa;on they are interested (Sayago & Blat, 2004.). This happens to those who browse the web in devices with small screens and those who access Internet through a screen reader.

LOR Accessibility

REGION HERA T.A.W INTAV %ERROR COMMON ERRORS FOUND North America

2 2 1 1.25 *1.1. Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element. *6.3. Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. *8.1. Make programmatic elements such as scripts and applets directly accessible or compatible with assistive technologies. *12.1. Title each frame to facilitate frame identification and navigation.

1 0 0 0.25 2 1 1 1 2 9 2 3.25

Europe

1 0 1 0.5 3 4 3 2.5 1 1 1 0.75 0 0 0 0

Asia & Africa

0 4 1 1.25 1 1 0 0.5 1 11 1 3.25 0 0 0 0

Central & South America

1 4 2 1.75 3 3 1 1.75 1 6 4 2.75 1 1 1 0.75

1,344

LOR Accessibility

REGION HERA T.A.W INTAV %CRITERIA TO VERIFY

COMMON CRITERIA TO VERIFY

North America

9 252 10 65.25 *2.1. Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup. *4.1. Clearly identify changes in the natural language of a document's text and any text equivalents. *5.1. For data tables, identify row and column headers. *5.2. For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells. *6.1. Organize documents so they may be read without style sheets. *6.3. Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. *11.4. If, after best efforts, you cannot create an accessible page, provide a link to an alternative page that uses W3C technologies, is accessible, has equivalent information, and is updated as often as the inaccessible page.

9 132 11 35.25 9 93 12 25.5 7 29 10 9

Europe

7 42 10 12.25 8 185 14 48.25 8 15 6 5.75 7 22 8 7.25

Asia & Africa

0 0 0 0 4 5 6 2.25 9 74 8 20.75 7 12 8 4.75

Central & South America

10 94 10 26 8 191 12 49.75 10 72 34 20.5 7 20 8 6.75

21.203

Conclusions •  The use of open source somware contribute to accessibility. Even though it does not avoid the problem of inaccessible content crea;on, but it facility the teacher task.

•  eXe-‐Learning need to be reprogrammed in order to adjust HTML and CSS code to the formal grammar of the W3C. A correct coding can be correctly interpreted by the user’s naviga;on devices and par;cularly by the special devices used by handicapped people.

Conclusions

•  The study carried out over LOR provides an overview of the current situa;on of the learning object repositories according to accessibility. The main issue in this point is to offer the appropriated forma;on to the designers of the learning objects and services (teachers, web designers in the universi;es) in order to improve the quality offered.

Thanks for your attention

Group of Broadband Communications and Distributed Systems Institute of Informatics and Applications University of Girona

Spanish Science and Education Ministry for the financial support of A2UN@ project (TIN2008-06862-C04-02/TSI).

Alban Program and the European Union Program of High Level Scholarships for Latin America (scholarship No. E06D103680CO).

Programa de cooperación con América La;na