Accessible Distance Learning

Motivations

Distance learning designers make courses accessible to students with disabilities:

• Accessible design is good design, and often benefits all users.
• Accessible design ensures that content is reaching the largest possible audience.
• Web users are diverse. They include people using phones, tablets, and a wide variety of other devices. People with disabilities are part of this diverse mix.
• An accessible website makes people with disabilities feel welcome.
• Accessibility is required by law.

Access Challenges

Mainstream technology is inaccessible to some people.

• People who are blind may use screen reader software or Braille devices to access a website; they can only access content that is text-based.
• People who are deaf cannot access audio content unless it is captioned or transcribed.
• Some individuals may not be able to use a mouse; they need to be able to navigate a web page and access all content with the keyboard alone.
• Some people with low vision, dyslexia, attention deficit, or cognitive disabilities have difficulty processing long lines of text and/or cluttered screens, and depend on white space, simple screen images, and good color contrast.  

Principles

Design websites to be:

Perceivable

• Provide text alternatives for non-text content.
• Caption multimedia.
• Present content in different ways.

Operable

• Make all functionality available from keyboard alone.
• Allow enough time to read content.
• Help users navigate and find content.

Understandable

• Make content appear and operate predictably.
• Help users avoid and correct errors.

Robust

• Maximize compatibility with current and future user tools.

Program Accessibility

Explore Ten Indicators of Distance Learning Program Accessibility on our site.
In an iterative process, the Indicators were shared with and refined with formative feedback from disabled student service and distance learning staff at sixteen postsecondary institutions as part of a DO-IT project. Each Indicator relates to one of four key stakeholders in the delivery of distance learning courses:

• students and potential students,
• distance learning designers,
• distance learning faculty, and
• distance learning program evaluators.

Impact

Making courses accessible to students with disabilities benefits society by:

• enhancing academic and career fields with the expertise and perspectives of people with disabilities.
• making learning opportunities available to more citizens.
• providing more and better structured data for indexing and searching websites, documents, and media.

Resources

The following resources can help you get started in designing inclusive distance learning programs.

Standards & Guidelines

• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
• Section 508 Standards

Further Guidance

• AccessDL
• Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM)
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
• UW Accessible IT Tools and Resources

Funding

DO-IT is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the State of Washington. The Boeing Company, Microsoft, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, and other organizations and individuals also contribute to DO-IT efforts.

Leadership

DO-IT: Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology
DO-IT is a collaboration of:
College of Engineering
College of Education
UW Information Technology

University of Washington
Box 354842
Seattle, Washington 98195
doit.uw.edu
Founder and Director: Sheryl Burgstahler, Ph.D.