{"id":2550,"date":"2019-10-18T17:07:03","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T17:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/?p=2550"},"modified":"2019-10-18T17:50:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T17:50:54","slug":"nwelearn-an-accessible-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/nwelearn-an-accessible-course\/","title":{"rendered":"NWeLearn: An Accessible Course"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2552\" style=\"width: 202px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Crystal.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2552\" class=\" wp-image-2552\" src=\"http:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Crystal.jpg\" alt=\"Crystal Nielsen\" width=\"192\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Crystal.jpg 1008w, https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Crystal-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Crystal-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Crystal-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2552\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crystal Nielsen<\/p><\/div>\n<p>These are some brief notes from an accessibility presentation I went to at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwelearn.org\">North West eLearn Conference<\/a>. My usual disclaimer: the rambling nature of my notes represents my interests and abilities, not those of the presenter, who was just great!<\/p>\n<p>Title: An Accessible Course: So Easy Your Grandmother Can Do It!<\/p>\n<p>Description:<br \/>\nIf you\u2019re like most faculty, you\u2019ve heard that you need to make your courses accessible. Surely, that\u2019s a task more formidable than helping your elderly relative set up a new smartphone. Or is it? In this session, attendees will learn several key concepts to make the creation of digitally accessible content second nature.<\/p>\n<p>Attendees will be able to<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Explain the basic, underlying principles involved with digital accessibility.<\/li>\n<li>Identify how to make images accessible, including special cases such as infographics.<\/li>\n<li>Identify how to make links accessible, including the use of image links and the concept of front-loading.<\/li>\n<li>Identify how to make headings accessible, including how to avoid empty headings and presentational attributes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Presenter:<br \/>\nCrystal Nielsen<br \/>\nNorthwest Nazarene University<br \/>\nInstructional Designer &amp; Technologist<br \/>\nCrystal brings expertise in online course design, digital accessibility, and copyright compliance to her role as Instructional Designer &amp; Technologist at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. Involved in higher education since 2004, she has worked extensively with Blackboard, ANGEL, and now Canvas. A prior chair of the Northwest eLearning Community, Crystal has an M.A. in education with an emphasis on educational technology from San Diego State University.<\/p>\n<p>My Notes:<br \/>\nI attended this to keep up on what others are doing about accessibility and to check in with any of the latest accessibility technology.<\/p>\n<p>7 out of 10 students use the captions on videos and 3 out of 4 of the students do so as a learning aid.<\/p>\n<p>She discussed &#8220;alt text&#8221; &#8211; this explains when an explanation is necessary. Info graphics need to be described. I suggested building infographics from an outline to help keep the infographic organized while providing an accessible transcript.<\/p>\n<p>Accessible links<br \/>\nBlind students often use the tab key to find links. Embed your links on descriptive phrases. Front loading: Provide the links using a bulleted list of the most important information. Make the first words of links unique &#8211; if the first words are all the same like, &#8220;Help Desk Google,&#8221; Help Desk LMS&#8221; use &#8220;LMS help desk,&#8221; &#8220;Google help desk.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Image links &#8211; make it functionally useful in the alt text.<\/p>\n<p>Accessible Page Structure<\/p>\n<p>Use headings, not bold, color, or font size to lay out a page. The screen readers announce the headings so it is a good practice to use them in order: H1, h2, h3, etc. You can use different fonts and bolding but use the headings formatting as well.<\/p>\n<p>Captioning Tools\u00a0 &#8211; she uses Canvas Studio, YouTube, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amara.org\">Amara.Org<\/a> (Amara does this for free).<\/p>\n<p>Canvas &#8211; Canvas has some general accessibility guidelines. WebAim has an accessibility web site with recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>Tables &#8211; Use correct labels for tables &lt;th&gt; for headers and &lt;td&gt; for table data.<\/p>\n<p>Color resolution. Use a color resolution checkers. Make sure the contrast is high.<\/p>\n<p>We had a tour of one of her courses that uses accessible, functional alt text in images.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These are some brief notes from an accessibility presentation I went to at the North West eLearn Conference. My usual disclaimer: the rambling nature of my notes represents my interests and abilities, not those of the presenter, who was just &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/nwelearn-an-accessible-course\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245],"tags":[1200,1190,1413,685,1129,1414,244],"class_list":["post-2550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accessibility","tag-nwelearn","tag-accessibility","tag-ada508","tag-conference","tag-elearning","tag-nwelearn2019","tag-udl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geoffcain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}