607 Best Practices for Accessible eLearning
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 26
Instructional Design
Bermuda B
Your client has just asked you to design an engaging eLearning course. The content will be a challenge, which you like. You quickly come up with a vision for the course: interactive, applicable, fun. You know instantly this course will be your showpiece, an award winner. Then the client says, “We need it to be accessible.” Your dream is dashed as you anticipate extra work and no engagement. But it doesn’t have to be that way!
In this session, you’ll see how you can make your award-winning design a reality while also keeping it accessible. You’ll start with what accessibility means—and what it doesn’t. You will look at sample slides and see why they don’t meet accessibility standards. Then you’ll learn all about the best practices for using accessible PDFs (the lowest form of accessible learning), closed captions (which type is really best—the answer may surprise you), keyboard navigation, and designing for a screen reader. The session will wrap up with a look at how to QA all of it.
In this session, you will learn:
- Best practices for designing closed captioning
- Best practices for creating accessible keyboard navigation
- Best practices for designing courses for learners using screen readers
- How to keep engagement in courses while maintaining accessibility
- How to keep fun slides (like drag-and-drops) in an accessible course
- How to insert described video for screen readers without impacting other learners
Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.
Technology
discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline
Steve Blane
Managing Partner
Darn Clever Design Collective
Steve Blane is an award-winning learning experience designer with a specialty in (and passion for) digital learning. He's been in the training and development industry for close to 20 years. Steve works with some of Canada's leading organizations to formulate and tweak their digital development strategy to better support organizational needs. Steve has taught learning experience design and eLearning development for over 10 years at certificate programs in Toronto. He is currently the program director for the Master of Digital Learning Certificate program.