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Welcome!
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Dr Shirley Evans JISC TechDis Associate
OER and accessibility
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Schedule
• Introduction • Barriers – discussion• Examples from OER projects• Examples from other projects• Solutions - discussion• Guidelines to help you• Tools to help you • Any questions please?• Close
Leading on Inclusive Practice
The JISC TechDis Service aims to be the leading educational advisory service, working across the UK, in the fields of accessibility and inclusion.
Pragmatic advice and guidance on accessibilityand inclusion.
High quality resources, tools and training.
Sustainable approaches.
Versatile and Responsive.
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Achievements
Meeting demands for training and guidance and delivery of sector wide solutions.
Partnership – supporting cultural change and delivering real “value added”
Embedding inclusive practice and tools
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Current Context
Challenges
•Recognition as the funded provider for inclusion
•Keeping accessibility on the agenda
•Reaching wider audiences
•Maximising the benefits of JISC Advance
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Barriers
Discussion
Why are you interested in accessibility and OER?
What are the key barriers that stop all OER materials being accessible?
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Examples from OER Projects
• Xerte
• STEM OER Guidance Wiki
• Organising Open Educational Resources (MEDEV with 17 UK partners)
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Xerte
Andy Beggan - University of Nottingham• Xerte is an Open Source content creation tool that allows non-
technical staff to quickly and easily build rich, interactive and engaging resources with high levels of accessibility already built in.
• JISC TechDis has worked closely with the University of Nottingham to help evolve their product from an HE based development platform to a popular teaching tool used extensively across a number of sectors.
• To the delight of both The University of Nottingham and JISC TechDis, Xerte Online Toolkits has scooped first prize at the IMS Global Learning Impact Awards 2010 in California.
• Link to youtube video with interactive transcript feature
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Organising Open Educational Resources (MEDEV with 17 UK partners)
HEA Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry & Veterinary MedicineMegan Quentin-Baxter - Director
From the original proposal:
• Document metadata and standards/taxonomies and accessibility requirements: Metadata/Workflow Toolkit.
• Identity and access management: Access to learning resources including sensitive (clinical) materials for ethical or data protection reasons. To include access from NHS environments and technical ‘accessibility’ considerations such as compatibility. DocumentAccess Toolkit.
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OOER Metadata/Workflow/Quality Assurance (QA) Tool
•OOER Metadata/Workflow/Quality Assurance (QA) Tool included links to TechDis (http://www.techdis.ac.uk/), W3C/WAI (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) and the JISC OER Phase 1 wiki on accessibility (https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/Accessibility-considerations?SearchFor=accessibility&sp=1)•''Disability/Accessibility'’ questions from the tool:
• Have you tested the resource against the W3C accessibility guidelines? [link]• [If Yes] Does it pass the W3C accessibility guidelines? • [If No] Why does the resource fail to meet the W3C guidelines?• [If No] Can the resource be easily modified to meet the W3C guidelines?
•''Technology'’ questions from the tool:• Does the resource need to be: Installed/Hosted/Accessed by web/etc. • Does the resource rely on an internal database (e.g. PHP/SQL data) to
function properly? • What browser plugins or downloadable software does the resource require
(e.g. Quick Time, Java, Flash)? • Is the resource backwardly compatible i.e. will it run on legacy software (e.g.
Office 97/2000/XP/2003)? • Is the resource accessible from behind a NHS firewall?
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STEM OER Guidance wiki
Paul Chinn – University of HullScience, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
This work constitutes a collection of guidance documents on all aspects of Open Educational Resources (OER) prepared by the STEM project teams from a number of Higher Education Academy/JISC OER pilot projects.
These projects ran from May 2009 to April 2010, and this guidance is based on the teams' combined experiences working with practising academics over that
time, to explore the issues surrounding OER production and release.
STEM OER Guidance wiki
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Examples from other Projects
• In-folio
• e-Book Accessibility Project
• HEAT Scheme
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In-Folio
• In-Folio: An Open Source Portfolio for students with learning disabilities
• Funded to increase accessibility and inclusion through technology in UK post-compulsory education.
• Work in many areas from guidance for teachers on using MS Word more accessibly, or using podcasts or video; to guidance for university managers on policy and strategy for inclusion.
• In-Folio is designed to be usable by all learners, disabled or not, to allow simple login, upload and organisation of materials, and to be accessible from any location to allow learners to maintain theirportfolio throughout their life
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In-Folio
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In-Folio
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In-Folio
• Funding is being obtained to further develop In-Folio as a result of user feedback.
• Current developments include:
• Training materials for parents, to help learners maintain and develop their portfolio when away from school/college.
• User community and discussion boards.• Learner progress application within In-Folio.
• Interest from Higher Education and Adult Learning
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e-Book Accessibility Project
Outline of project
The project involved assessors carrying out investigations with aggregators and publishers to establish how well e-book platforms catered for disabled users.
Testing was anonymised to encourageEngagement.
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JISC TechDis Accessibility Bridge Model
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What the research showed
Technology Best case (number of actions required)
Worst case (number of actions required)
Mouse access 3 8
Keyboard-only 11 170
Screen reader access 9 38 where possible but not possible on some platforms
Voice control 4 8
Table showing no. of actions required to open and read a page of e-Book
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E-book Accessibility Project
Conclusion
Encouragingly, accessibility is entirely achievable. There were examples of good practice.
A composite platform with the best of all the platforms tested would be very close to an ideal system.
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HEAT Scheme
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=2_1_7
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HEAT Scheme
The HEAT scheme provides staff working in higher education (teaching staff, library staff, careers officers, staff developers, IT specialists and accessibility or support specialists) with technology with which to develop or uncover an aspect of good inclusive practice. This may be specific to the teaching of a particular discipline, supporting a specific role area, or may have more generic applicability across the sector. Staff time is not funded, as the good practice developed is expected to form a normal part of the routine of teaching and learning, supporting the inclusion model where specific adjustments for disabled students are required less often if the mainstream offering is more inclusively designed in the first instance.
Four rounds of the HEAT scheme have now been funded - the current round is running in Wales only. In 2006-7 and 2007-8 the scheme was jointly funded by the JISC TechDis service and the Higher Education Academy. In 2008-9 the scheme has been funded by JISC's capital fund and extended to further projects in Wales and Northern Ireland by the Higher Education Academy.
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Solutions
Discussion
What accessibility challenges have you found and how have you addressed them?
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Guidelines to help you
• Towards Accessible e-Book Platforms
• Accessibility Essentials
• Accessibility Guidance for Technology Projects
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Towards Accessible e-Book Platforms
• Find out about How We Did it and Why This Matters to Academic Publishers.
• Download Towards Accessible e-Book Platforms (PDF - 702 KB)
• Download Towards Accessible e-Book Platforms (accessible version) (pdf - 157 KB)
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Accessibility Essentials
1: Making Electronic Documents More Readable2: Writing Accessible Electronic Documents with Microsoft®
Word 3: Creating Accessible Presentations 4: Making the Most of PDFs
Download http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_20or order [email protected]
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Accessibility Guidance for Technology Projects
JISC TechDis have produced a series of videos outlining best practice for staff involved in projects within their institution or organisation. These videos will look at steps you can take to maximise the outputs of your project, so that the audience can get the most benefit from it, reducing the potential risks associated with inaccessible resources, and how to improve communications.
The videos cover hints and tips to ensure that your projects outputs are as accessible as possible at each step. In the first video Simon Ball and Alistair McNaught, Senior Advisors at JISC TechDis, introduce the series.
View the introduction to Accessibility Guidance for Technology ProjectsDownload the Introductory Video Transcript (MS Word - 33 KB)
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Tools to help you
• Web2Access
• Accessibility Toolbar
• OASES
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Web2Access
This application seeks to;
• Assist both users and developers in their understanding of an approach to reviewing the accessibility of particular applications.
• It also includes generic advice to enable the process to be followed as applications will come and go but diversity of need will grow.
• It attempts to categorise the sites/applications according to what tasks are to be attempted.
• To give providers a sense of which type of application have “issues” for certain “difficulties”.
• Visit the Web2Access Site.
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Accessibility Toolbar
This free application can be installed on a website or downloaded onto an individual PC, working seamlessly across all operating systems to provide significant benefits for everyone using the internet, especially those involved in education or with a disability.
The toolbar can be installed 1) on your webpage (see http://www.techdis.ac.uk for anexample - the toolbar is at the top of the page)2) on your computer - if you have administrator rights 3) as an active bookmark for use on specific web pages.
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OASES
This is a resource which aims to support staff working across a range of further and higher education contexts in identifying areas of current strength and weakness in their practice in terms of accessibility and inclusion.
The role groups it focuses upon are those which have been identified by a range of JISC TechDis activities as being key to facilitating an inclusive and accessible learner experience: senior managers; library staff; IT/Network managers; marketing managers; learning technologists and staff developers; and disability / additional learning support officers.
The JISC TechDis Online Accessibility Self Evaluation Service (OASES)
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Any questions please?
