In this module, we'll get into the details of making Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents accessible. However, for this lesson, instead of jumping right into a technical discussion and demonstrating detailed techniques related to accessibility. We thought we'd start by introducing you to concepts we'll be talking about later in this module and throughout the course. We'll do this by looking at some online courses and pointing out accessibility issues that we'll be covering in our upcoming lessons. The first course we'll look at is an online course that I taught and still teach, Universal Design for Digital Media, which focuses on accessible web design. The version of the course shown here created within the desire to learn learning management system was the first iteration of this course from a few years ago. Looking at the content for the course, you can see that the lessons for this module, one to 14 are presented all on one page. This format is repeated throughout the course. Presenting this much information on one page can be both visually and cognitively overwhelming for all users. But even more so for students using assistive technology such as screen readers, as we learned from our previous interview with Bill and Amelia. Research shows that users read material differently on the web than they do in print. Studies show that individuals tend to scan information on the web, picking out keywords or sentences. Trying to scan or find information on one long page of content can be challenging. To facilitate reading of online content, it's recommended to break up long blocks of text into shorter segments. Have meaningful headings and sub headings, highlight keywords and phrases, use bulleted lists, and reduce the word count. Check the resources section of this module for a link to an article on this topic and for other resources. I'm now showing a shortened version of my Universal Design course, which use the Canvas learning management system. In this latter version, each module was broken up into smaller subsections that allowed students to tackle smaller segments of material at a time. We also try to employ more use of bullet list, headings and sub headings, and to reduce the word count. If we move to module view within this course, we see that breaking up each module to sub-sections provides an outline type view of the overall course, making it easier to find information and navigate through course site. Most learning management systems are also able to track student progress at the page content level. So this type of course organization, separating content into separate pages also allows the tracking of student progress at a more granular level. The breaking up of material into smaller chunks whether lessons within a module. The breaking up of long blocks of text into smaller paragraphs or bullet items is a key strategy and best practice in making course material more effective and accessible. Creating smaller blocks of material also sets up milestones. In other words, shorter segments of material or assignments. This has been shown to provide a psychological incentive for completing work in a course. Another key element to look at within a course is the accessibility of documents. This includes Word, Powerpoint and PDF documents. One of the first reading assignments in this course is a chapter from an e-book I wrote for the class. If I download and open this chapter, Introduction to Universal Design, we see that it is a Word document. Word has a feature to check for accessibility which I'll now demonstrate. It's located under the file menu. You then select check for issues and then check accessibility from the pull down menu. Later in this module, we'll discuss in detail the steps involved in using this feature to find and correct accessibility issues. I'll just point out here that the tool produces a report on the right side column of the document with information on how and why to repair the issue. For this document it includes warnings about the unclear hyperlink text presented in the document. It's considered best practice to provide readable link text. In other words, instead of presenting a long URL, embed the URL within semantic text, in other words, text that has meaning. Such as for example, Kennedy Center text only page, instead of the long URL I placed here. You should check each Word document in your course for accessibility using this tool. Turning to the first lesson in the Universal Design course, I'm going to use a tool called WAVE, developed by the organization called WebAIM to check the page for number of common accessibility issues. WAVE can be added to chrome browser as an extension. WAVE produces report on the left side of the web page as you can see here. The only outright error it reports here is an empty button. This refers to the hamburger menu at the top-left of the page. If I select the red icon on the page, it tells me again that there's an empty button or that it has no value text. If I select more information, it provides more extensive information about how to address the problem and how to fix it. What this means from an accessibility perspective is that a screen reader user would not know the purpose of this button. I'm going to reload this page so we can see what this button actually does. Clicking on this icon, we see that it toggles the display of the navigation and options menu at left. I want to quickly demonstrate how this lack of labeling would affect the screen reader user. I'm going to turn on a open source screen reader called NVDA. NVDA is an acronym for Non Visual Desktop Access. As I tab through the page, NVDA reads out the labels associated with each menu item. Clickable, clickable, Account link. Clickable, clickable, Dashboard link. Clickable, clickable, Group link. Clickable, clickable, calendar link. Clickable, clickable Inbox. Clickable, clickable Commons. Secondary navigation region list with, out of list clickable catalog icon graphic clickable link. Out of list breadcrumb navigation [INAUDIBLE]. >> When I reached the hamburger icon, I actually received no audio feedback at all. I'm going to back tap from the breadcrumb just to check it again. So you see there's no feedback at all. The screen reader user would therefore have no clue what's here if anything. And this can be a very useful feature that is the turning on and off of these menus. These can be a useful feature for screen reader users, since it's likely they may want to turn off this navigation menu when reviewing this content. Now this is an example of an issue that is out of the control of the instructor. There are no settings available for labeling this icon. I have to report it to the course designer or the people responsible for the Canvas interface used on this system. And this will likely occur to you in courses that you teach. You may discover a feature of the learning management system or interface that is inaccessible or beyond your control to fix. In these cases, all you can do is to advocate for its repair for those who have control over the interface. As we move through the rest of this course, we'll talk more about the areas of a course you have control over. And those where you'll have to advocate to those overseeing the course management system. So there are of course, other areas of a course that we would review to check for accessibility such as, are videos captioned? Is there adequate color contrast? Is there what we call an adequate heading structure? So, it's not to overwhelm you with too many issues at once, we'll cover these other items later in this module and throughout the course. In this video, we've reviewed a number of accessibility issues and concepts. Certainly, we haven't covered all the issues we'll be addressing in this course, but enough hopefully to give you an understandable introduction to these concepts. In the lessons that follow, we'll talk in more detail about how to address these issues in Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents.
