Accessibility

[BrianH]

Of the four themes touched upon this week, I choose to focus upon accessibility.  The assessments for online learning readiness that were linked to this week are useful in helping students determine if they are ready or not for online learning.  What is missing from the discussion is the question of whether or not online courses are ready for the range of students (each with their preferred learning styles) that will enroll in these courses.  If a student is a dependent learner is he or she not ready for online learning?  Hopefully, the answer can be ‘yes,’ but this will require educators to prepare online courses that are ready for dependent learners.  So, how can online courses be designed to be accessible to all?

I believe that it is the responsibility of online course designers to implement features into the course that provide students will a range of options to approaching the content – features that support the needs of a wide range of learning styles and needs.  For example, apps can be provided for text-to-speech, videos can include subtitles, and discussion boards can be provided to  encourage social interaction.  In terms of assessment, multiple options can also be provided.

[Jillian Pawlyn]

Hi Brian, thanks.

I don’t think the fully online course can be ‘accessible to all’. But I do think we can do our best to make it accessible to many/most.

If we develop learning resources with an awareness of functionality with screen readers, closed captions, adjustable font styles sizes, colours. software and apps which work across platforms and devices. Offering relevant language options in multilingual institutions.

With robust process for learners to inform us of their specific support needs and processes in place to provide assessments which are not detrimental to the student who has known support needs.

You can read my response in my Blog.

[Author]

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