A rather grand title for an Advance article I hear you say. However, I believe we’re covering a grand topic –

accessibility – which has two things in common with the cries heard in 1789. Firstly, it promises to free our content,

making it accessible to all. Secondly, the term has different meanings to many people and is implemented in various

ways.

The title of the article is where the fancy stuff ends. This article is a practical introduction to accessibility for

e-learning projects. It’s designed to help developers, designers and project managers understand the key issues

involved and the practical steps that they can take to make their content easier to use, easier to understand and more

engaging. Drawing on many years of experience, the article also features the thoughts of the only team to have won

the e-Learning Age award for ‘Care Taken to Achieve Inclusivity in an e-Learning Programme’.

So, why worry about accessibility?

Recent research conducted by CSR Europe indicates that as many as 20 per cent of people have a disability that may

interfere with the use of a computer for educational purposes. This means that a huge population could be taking

e-learning courses but not getting the best out of them. It could mean that one in five members of your team take an

e-learning course but don’t really benefit from the experience, risking non-compliance, frustration, anxiety and lost

productivity. Even if you acknowledge and accept this, the truth is that e-learning that’s designed to be accessible

tends to be more effective for everyone. Bottom line, accessibility matters!

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27Liberté, égalité, fraternité By Angus Main

Okay, so what do we actually mean by accessibility? Most people associate accessibility with meeting the needs

of the physically disabled. However, as Jonathan Snook

points out in his blog1 this definition misses the point.

Snook see accessibility as being a spectrum: at one end

we have people with a disability whilst at the other end we

have people who face no obstacles when using a PC. In the

middle, there are the rest of us: those that wear glasses, that

don’t like using the mouse, that have trouble distinguishing

colours, that don’t like looking at the screen for too long, and

so on. Snook therefore sees accessibility as a usability issue.

A well designed e-learning course will be accessible and will

allow a diverse range of people to use it comfortably but will

also create a design that is more effective for every learner.

Everyone benefits from having interactions that are easier to

use, colours that are well thought through and language that

is clear.

The standardsThere are a host of standards for accessibility out there

but the one that Saffron uses is the World Wide Web

Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The

W3C provides a set of guidelines and checklists that help you

to grade your site from conformance level A to AAA – with

AAA being the most accessible. We find that the AA rating

provides the level of accessibility that most people need. You

can learn more about these standards by going to

http://www.w3.org.

One thing to be aware of here is that these guidelines are

not focused on e-learning – they are guidelines for websites.

This means that there will be some items on the checklist

that your e-learning course cannot meet, which is fine as

long as you can satisfy the majority of the criteria – aim for

accessibility not perfection.

Does accessibility cost more? This is not our experience. If you think about

accessibility before you start the project and plan how

you are going to build accessibility into your design,

then the additional costs are minimal. In addition, this

investment usually leads to a course that is more usable

and more accessible.

Just like brand guidelines, course duration or the tone

of language, accessibility should be one of the factors

that is considered by instructional and graphic designers

from the very beginning. Good designers can still create

attractive and exciting content while keeping within

accessibility guidelines.

Wouldn’t it be easier to create a separate version for people with disabilities?No. Firstly, creating different versions of courses in this

way isn’t inclusive and can cause issues with equivalence.

Secondly, creating more than one version of a course

will increase your workload, impede testing and act as a

deterrent to testing.

Can you use Flash and still be accessible?With the release of Flash 6, Macromedia provided

accessibility features to Flash based content. Although

the W3C AAA standards preclude the use of plug-ins, in

practice Flash’s accessibility properties make it possible

for the content to communicate fully with accessibility

software such as screen readers and magnification tools.

In fact, the way that Flash is dynamic and vector based

can assist these programs.

You can find out more about Flash accessibility at the

following link: www.adobe.com/accessibility/examples.html

1 http://www.snook.ca 2

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Mind your language

Language is often a barrier to accessibility that many

people forget. Having content that can be read by a screen

reader but that can’t be understood because it’s complex,

full of jargon or out of context does not help the learner

with or without a disability. Complex language can also be a

problem when English is not the learner’s first language.

When building courses, we have found that the guidance

provided by the Plain English Campaign is very useful. You

can find out more about this campaign at

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk.

Horrors to avoidInteractions which require a high level of mouse control or

rely on an awareness of the visual layout of the screen will

always be difficult to make accessible. Avoid describing

screen items in relative spatial terms. If your instructions

sound like ‘drag the correct answers to the column on the

left’ or ‘match these questions with the correct responses’

then you will have problems.

You should also avoid low colour-contrast in graphics and be

aware of how your course will look to users who are colour

blind. A useful tool to help with this can be found at

http://www.vischeck.com.

Type that is too small or cannot be resized is a problem

for everyone. These days, laptops are getting smaller and

mobile devices are more sophisticated. Learners need to be

able to resize content but enabling this can be difficult. You

should try to avoid overlapping elements that obscure each

other at larger font settings. However, if increasing the font

size results in sections of text appearing with scroll bars, this

can in itself have a detrimental effect on accessibility and

usability. Our approach is to use a suitably large font size

as standard throughout courses, and then to make sure that

screens work with magnification tools.

Ten tips for accessibility

1. Images and animations: use the alt attribute (or

accProps in Flash) to describe the function of each

visual

2. Image maps: use the client-side map and text for

hotspots

3. Multimedia: provide captioning and transcripts of

audio as well as descriptions of any video

4. Hypertext links: make sure that your explanations

of links make sense when read out of context, for

example, avoid ‘click here’

5. Page organisation: use headings and lists for variety

and ensure that your course is structured consistently,

using CSS for layout and style where possible

6. Graphs and charts: summarise where possible or use

the longdesc attribute

7. Scripts, applets and plug-ins: provide alternative

content in case active features are inaccessible or

unsupported

8. Frames: use the noframes element and meaningful

titles

9. Tables: make line-by-line reading sensible and

summarise

10. Check your work: validate all that you write and use

the tools, checklists and guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG

Source: W3C Web Accessibility Initiative

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2 http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk3 http://www.freedomscientific.com

Ongoing testing for accessibilityWhen building an e-learning course, your process should

allow for frequent accessibility testing. The earlier you find

an issue, the easier it will be to fix. A number of tools are

available to help you with this process at

http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html.

However, we have found that accessibility testing needs

human intervention; it can’t be simply driven by the tools.

As the folks at Skills for Access2 say ‘accessible e-learning is

achieved by engagement, not by formula.’ We always use a

diverse pilot group of end users who test various aspects of

the accessibility and the usability of our courses. In the past,

we have found that although our courses are technically

accessible, they’re not very usable and this creates a barrier

to real accessibility. We therefore try to have members

of this group available to our designers and developers

throughout the development process so that we can test for

accessibility all the way through a build.

Finally, it’s useful for developers to have access to tools such

as JAWS3 – a screen reader that is used by many people

who have a visual disability. It works by reading out the text

on each page and, although designing courses to comply

with JAWS and other screen readers takes some thought,

this enhances the usability of courses for everyone.

1789 and all that!

In conclusion, if you are building e-learning content, you

have the opportunity to make it effective for the majority

of the population – don’t pass this chance up, free your

content!

Building accessibility into your e-learning course should

be a matter of best practice. Intelligent design, proactive

engagement and the appropriate use of the tools available

will ensure that not only is your content available to a

diverse group of people but that it delivers this content in

the most usable form possible.

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Gray’s Inn House127 Clerkenwell RoadLondonEC1R 5DBt: 020 7092 8900f: 020 7242 2757e: info@saffroninteractive.com

www.saffroninteractive.com

ISSN: 1478-7641Design by Madhesh Arthanarisamy

© 2009 Saffron Interactive All rights reserved

Angus is the Product Manager at Saffron Interactive. He has a background in Flash

development and over five years of experience in object oriented programming,

design and testing. He has planned and implemented the development on a range

of e-learning projects for clients such as Microsoft, BT, O2, and Hilton.

Angus holds a BA in Interactive Multimedia Production and is a Certified Flash

Designer. He has a wide skill set in development technologies and techniques,

including Actionscript 3, JavaScript, XML, PHP, Visual Basic, SQL Server, AICC and

SCORM communication.

He is currently working at the forefront of learning technologies, developing a range

of products that utilise the latest in mobile, video and RIA technology.

Angus can be contacted at angus@saffroninteractive.com