Accessibility from the Ground Up: Build Captions and Usable Design into All eLearning

“Accessible eLearning Benefits All Learners”explored the reasons forcreating accessible eLearning content. This spotlight article launches afour-part series on how to do that; each part will address a different type ofbarrier that learners might face.

To be considered accessible, eLearning contentmust meet these attributes, captured by the acronym POUR:

• Perceivable—Content is available to the learners’ senses, primarily seeing and hearing for online content
• Operable—Users can interact with the content using standard input devices, including a mouse or keyboard, or an adaptive technology
• Understandable—Content is clear and unambiguous
• Robust—Content is accessible using a wide range of technologies and abilities

What makes content accessible?

While some accessibility solutions work formultiple access barriers, developers often encounter what Dmitri Belser,executive director of theCenter for Accessible Technology(C forAT) in Berkeley, California, calls “dueling disabilities.”

“The needs of people with disabilities areincredibly diverse and sometimes completely opposite. It’s a really hard thingto work out,” Belser said, describing issues in constructing physicallyaccessible spaces. “It also happens in technology. For deaf people, you need tohave text and you need to have icons. But blind people can’t access that. Theneeds of those two groups are completely opposite.”

Accessibility online, Belser said, “is reallyall about redundancy, having it in multiple formats so people can do what theywant.”

An additional challenge in creating accessibleeLearning content, Belser points out, is that it is a constantly changingarena. Technology, tools, and adaptive devices change: A tool that wascompliant with accessibility standards is discontinued, or the new releaseisn’t compliant. An operating system upgrade means that your laptop or phone nolonger works with your favorite software program or app.

Despite the “moving target” nature of creatingaccessible eLearning content, some general design principles apply.Universal design, also called human-centereddesign, aims to create content that is usable by the widest range of peopleoperating in the widest range of situations; it addresses issues facing peoplewith visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive disabilities, as well as learnerswith low literacy or for whom English is a second language. In fact, designingfor accessibility builds in flexibility that may make it easier to keep contentcurrent.

“There is a pretty big overlap between usabilityand accessibility,” said Jared Smith ofWebAIM, a nonprofit webaccessibility consulting organization based at Utah State University. “A lot ofbuilding in accessibility is building in flexibility and compatibility.” Smithcited design for mobile, where many of the same features that constituteresponsive design, content that adapts itself to the learner’senvironment—laptop, tablet, or smartphone—seamlessly accommodate screenmagnifiers and other assistive technologies.

The P of the POUR acronym, making contentperceivable,pertainsprimarily to learners with visual and auditory disabilities. But even thatmeans different things to different learners.

Adding text aidshard-of-hearing learners

Auditory disabilities range from mild hearingloss to deafness, any of which can occur at any time in life. A robust deafculture exists that includes people born deaf and those who became deaf at sometime in their lives. Their needs are quite different from those in an evenlarger group of potential learners: people who are hard of hearing, which canoccur as a result of many causes, including aging.

Making eLearning content accessible to peoplewho are hard of hearing is fairly straightforward:

• All video should have closed captioning. This isdifferent from subtitling, which shows only dialogue. Full captioning describesambient sound in the video, such as a door creaking, muffled talking in thebackground, or music playing.
• A complete transcript should be available forany audio stream, whether the audio accompanies video or stands alone—a radioshow or podcast, for example.

Joel, whom we met in“Accessible eLearning Benefits All Learners,”experiencedfrustration when required by his employer to complete online training that didnot offer captions or transcripts. Despite laws that require businesses andemployers to make their web content and training materials accessible, Joel’sexperience is very common.

Adding captioning provides benefits beyondaccessibility. “Captioning was designed for hearing-impaired people, but thebiggest users of captioning now are sports bars and airports,” said Belser,citing captioning as one of many accessibility features that provide a betteroverall user experience.

About a third of college students whoparticipated in a multi-university study on the use of captioning andtranscripts, headed by Dr. Katie Linder at Oregon State University, said thatthese tools help them stay focused on video content and aid in bothcomprehension and retention of the material. More than half of respondents saidthat no captions or transcripts were available or they did not know whethercaptions or transcripts were available; comments indicated that many of thesestudents would use those features if they could.

Do it right the first time

Many employers and educational institutionsassume that, if a person requests accessible content, existing eLearning can be“fixed” in a way that makes it usable, said Wanda Blackett ofDeafHeart Design, an accessible eLearning company in Ontario, Canada.Adding captioning, such as in Joel’s case, might be possible, but it istime-consuming and expensive. If a journalist like Joel must meet a deadline—ora student cannot take a required class until the materials are retrofitted—thatperson is forced to confront illegal and unfair barriers that other learners donot face.

What Joel’s employer—and millions of othereLearning providers and users—might not realize is that waiting until someonerequests accommodation is too late. Even when it can be done, addingaccessibility features after the fact is just a “Band-Aid,” Blackett said. “ForeLearning to be accessible, you need to build it in.”

If Joel were deaf, the situation would be evenmore complicated. Adding captions is not sufficient to make content accessibleto a deaf person who, essentially, uses English as a second language. “Even fordeaf children who are raised in an English-speaking environment, their Englishlevels off at about a Grade 4 level,” Blackett said. After that, educationshifts from concrete to more abstract concepts, and language becomes muchharder for a non-native speaker, she explained. Anyone who has mastered thebasics of a foreign language, then tried to watch a movie or participate in anormal conversation in that language quickly realizes that the idioms andnuances of the language and its associated culture are beyond comprehension.That is how many deaf learners feel when thrown into an English-languageeLearning course; the captioning might consist of a large volume of complextext, adding up to an overwhelming experience. This is also true for adultswith low literacy skills or who learned English as a second language.

There is a solution: universal design. Whencreating eLearning, following principles of universal design will ensure thattext is usable to deaf learners and others who struggle with complex English.Universal design also addresses other barriers to access or understanding,which will be described in the remaining spotlights in this series.