Holistic approaches to e‐learning accessibility

The importance of accessibility to digital e‐learning resources is widely acknowledged. The World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative has played a leading role in promoting the importance of accessibility and developing guidelines that can help when developing accessible web resources. The accessibility of e‐learning resources provides additional challenges. While it is important to consider the technical and resource related aspects of e‐learning when designing and developing resources for students with disabilities, there is a need to consider pedagogic and contextual issues as well. A holistic framework is therefore proposed and described, which in addition to accessibility issues takes into account learner needs, learning outcomes, local factors, infrastructure, usability and quality assurance. The practical application and implementation of this framework is discussed and illustrated through the use of examples and case studies

Modern Practices for Responsive Web Design and Web Accessibility

Responsive web design and web accessibility play crucial roles in ensuring an optimal user experience on the web. By designing websites with responsiveness and accessibility in mind, more opportunities are opened up for a wider audience to access and interact with our content. Through modern practices, responsive web design allows websites to reach several different devices ranging from compact smartwatches to expansive television screens. Designing for accessibility provides accommodations for individuals with impairments while also providing benefits for individuals without impairments. However, designing for responsiveness and accessibility can present challenges; a poor attempt at providing accessibility features can worsen a user’s experience. It is vital that a website is designed properly to ensure usability for all users

Foregrounding accessibility for user experience design

textI am interested in creating generative tools and techniques for designing accessible user experiences for end users. As a user experience designer, I am working on embracing the web accessibility standards and guidelines and including them from the beginning of the User Experience (UX) design process. My projects are directed at facilitating design students and professionals to understand two things: that the broad concept of web accessibility is important, and how they can embed web accessibility into the UX design process at a very early stage. To do this, I used different media (website, posters and videos etc.) to create awareness and educate designers in an interesting, simple and engaging way. In this report, I will discuss the definition and role of accessible design, identify limitations in existing tools and methods, and demonstrate how future designers might research, prototype, analyze, and implement their designs for all users.Desig

The role of accessibility in a universal web

"Universal design" is the process of creating products that are usable by people with the widest possible range of abilities, operating within the widest possible range of situations; whereas "accessibility" primarily refers to design for people with disabilities. While the focus of accessibility is disabilities, research and development in accessibility brings benefits to everyone, particularly users with situational limitations, including device limitations and environmental limitations. Awareness and understanding of the benefits of web accessibility to users without disabilities is growing in some areas with the rapid increase of web-enabled devices such as mobile phones, tablets, televisions, and more; with the increasing focus on the growing number of older web users; and with wider web reach in areas with high incidence of low literacy, low bandwidth, older technology, etc. Although there is significant overlap between designing for accessibility and designing for situational limitations, addressing one set of needs does not necessarily provide sufficient solutions for other needs. Keeping accessibility focused on disabilities encourages research and development on meeting the specific needs of people with disabilities. This communications paper explains the importance of "accessibility" continuing to focus on people with disabilities, while further integrating accessibility with web design, development, and research in other areas, including those covered under universal design and design for all. It also describes how the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) are working to address accessibility and related user needs throughout the technologies of the Web, and invites all interested parties to participate in research and development to further integrate accessibility for people with disabilities in ways that benefit all

Web Accessibility: A Tutorial for University Faculty

Web accessibility is the practice of making Web sites accessible to people, such as the disabled, to access the Internet. Approximately 40 million Americans have some form of disability, and slightly less than 2.5 million are enrolled in postsecondary institutions. Since the instructional role of the Internet has become a central part of both conventional classroom instruction and distance education, it is imperative that instructional Web sites be designed for accessibility. The purpose of this article is to introduce Web accessibility issues to university faculty. The tutorial contains two main sections. In the first, we review the literature on the magnitude of the problem, empirical studies, and the legal mandates surrounding Web accessibility. In the second section, we discuss the standards related to Web accessibility, and the authoring and evaluation tools available for designing accessible Web sites

Accessibility factors for totally blind users of Palestinian universities websites

The World Wide Web (Web) is considered to be one of the sources of information and services.Universities use their webpages to communicate with stakeholders.Most of the related researchers have discovered significant faults with respect to accessibility of university websites, especially for blind users.In order to determine the totally blind requirements for designing websites, this study conducted a comprehensive literature review and based it on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.0. The study revealed important factors in designing an accessible university webpage prototype. An online questionnaire was constructed to evaluate the accessibility of the prototype from blind users’ perspective.From the evaluation of 16 visually impaired participants, it was found that the prototype was highly accessible among the totally blind where the mean score was 4.19. A regression analysis test was also utilized to determine the relationship between the items of the questionnaire and the main principles of accessibility.The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between these items.In conclusion, the accessibility factors are indirectly validated, and could be used to develop an accessible university website for blind users

Investigating Mobile Accessibility Guidance for People with Aphasia

The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) have become widely accepted as the standard for web accessibility evaluation. This poster investigates how the mobile version of these guidelines caters for people with aphasia (PWA) by comparing the results from user testing against that of an audit using the guidelines. We outline the efficacy of the guidelines in the broader context of how they cater for various impairments and offer some recommendations for designing for people with aphasia

Designing a Belief Function-Based Accessibility Indicator to Improve Web Browsing for Disabled People

The purpose of this study is to provide an accessibility measure of web-pages, in order to draw disabled users to the pages that have been designed to be ac-cessible to them. Our approach is based on the theory of belief functions, using data which are supplied by reports produced by automatic web content assessors that test the validity of criteria defined by the WCAG 2.0 guidelines proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) organization. These tools detect errors with gradual degrees of certainty and their results do not always converge. For these reasons, to fuse information coming from the reports, we choose to use an information fusion framework which can take into account the uncertainty and imprecision of infor-mation as well as divergences between sources. Our accessibility indicator covers four categories of deficiencies. To validate the theoretical approach in this context, we propose an evaluation completed on a corpus of 100 most visited French news websites, and 2 evaluation tools. The results obtained illustrate the interest of our accessibility indicator

Comparative analysis of the availability of cinema websites, taking into account the principles of universal design

The subject of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of cinema websites, taking into account the principles of universal design. The universal designing is a philosophy which central assumption is to create products, including graphic interfaces so that they are accessible to as many users as possible. An accessibility is a term that describes the extent to which users of different ages, with varying degrees of physical or mental fitness, can use it. Therefore, it is essential to adapt the interface to the largest possible audience when designing the interface. In the paper the following hypothesis has been defined: "The application of universal design principles increases the accessibility of websites”. The "Multikino" website has been selected for the research, which does not require the universal design, and the website created for the purpose of this study that meets these requirements. The research methods used in the study include eye-tracking, checking compliance with WCAG (ang. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) guidelines using the WAVE (ang. Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) tool, and conducting an interface assessment survey