Digest #147: Making Your Material Digitally Accessible
By Dr Helena Paterson
Dr Helena Paterson is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Glasgow. She is the Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning Lead for the School of Psychology. Her expertise lies in digital education and her research is about children and adults’ perception of difference as it pertains so first impressions and person perception. Dr Paterson was the guest host of the #LrnSciChat on Digital Accessibility on 25 August 2020. You can find the summary of that Twitter chat here: Digital Accessibility #LrnSciChat. You can follow her on Twitter @PatersonHelena.
To boost digital accessibility, the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 came into effect in the UK in 2018. This law requires that all websites for organisations that benefit from public money must be digitally accessible to all users. This law also applies to teaching materials hosted in virtual learning systems in universities such as Moodle and Blackboard. Extensive guidelines have been written to help organisations to make their websites digitally accessible and are known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). This law has sparked a wider discussion about how we make our content accessible to students and also to pupils because it has shone a spotlight on the different kinds of things that can be barriers to learners. More importantly, though, it made many people realize that digitally accessible also means better for all students. In starting to work with my own materials, I found that it is not a lot of effort and does not take much time to make materials accessible. I also really find the concept “Accessible by Design” very useful: Plan with accessibility in mind when you design new teaching materials. In today’s digest a collection of resources is provided to get you started with digital accessibility.
1. Dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility by Karwai Pun
This is an excellent summary article that discusses attention, social-emotional issues, and environmental context issues. While the article applies these issues to user experience research, the concepts are the same for all of us. This article features helpful posters that can be downloaded and used as a resource.
Image from Source (all posters can be downloaded and used)
2. SCULPT for Accessibility by Helen Wilson
This guideline was designed for Worcestershire County Council SCULPT and provides a quick guide to help people create documents that meet basic accessibility requirements.
Image from Source
3. Dyslexia friendly style guide
The British Dyslexia Association produced this style guide to help people make screen and print materials more accessible to individuals with dyslexia. However, it incorporates many of the guidance available elsewhere in a simple and easy-to-use guide.
4. Make your content accessible to everyone with the Accessibility Checker
The most used Microsoft apps such as Word and PowerPoint include an accessibility checker tool in the 2016 and later versions of the software. This takes a lot of the legwork out of making your document accessible.
Image from Pixabay
5. Digital Accessibility Guidance by The University of Glasgow
This page is geared towards teaching materials and teachers, so it is exceedingly useful for answering may questions that you might have about the various kinds of materials that need to be accessible. Also, check the section on how to improve digitial accessibility when using social media.
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Digest #142: (COVID-19 Edition): Online Teaching and Learning Resources
Digest #144: Talking to Kids about Race
