Accessibility is often provided through accommodations. Schools are legally obligated to provide accommodations to enrolled students with identified disabilities, based on their needs—sign language interpreters in lectures for deaf students, digital copies of textbooks for students who are blind or have reading difficulties, extended time on exams for students who need more time due to cognitive or physical disabilities.
With online learning, the obligations are less clear—for example, with MOOCs, where students around the world are taking courses but are not enrolled at the sponsoring school or organization. Also, accommodations are not well established—sign language interpreters and note takers are typically accommodations for the physical classroom. How does an organization ensure they are meeting obligations and giving online students the support they need participate fully and to be successful?
Providers of online learning are best off delivering courses that are accessible out-of-the-box, without the need for special accommodations. And many of the features that provide an accessible experience for people with disabilities benefit all learners. For example, lecture transcripts are an excellent tool for study and review. However, without deliberate attention to the technologies, standards, and guidelines that comprise the Web Platform, accessibility may be difficult to achieve, and learners with disabilities may be left behind.
The activities of the Accessible Online Learning W3C Community Group take place at the intersection of accessibility and online learning. We focus on reviewing current W3C resources and technologies to ensure the requirements for accessible online learning experiences are considered. We also identify areas where additional resources and technologies are needed to ensure full participation of people with disabilities in online learning experiences.
This group will not publish Specifications.
Note: Community Groups are proposed and run by the community. Although W3C hosts these conversations, the groups do not necessarily represent the views of the W3C Membership or staff.
The evidence of our work is generally found in the group email discussions, or on the group’s wiki. But, after a year of existence, it seemed like a good time for a short update here, just so you know that the group is keeping busy!
Our mission is to explore how to support the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative in providing resources and guidance for people who want to provide accessible, quality online learning experiences for learners and instructors with disabilities.
That’s a broad remit for a community group that relies on unspecified commitments of volunteer time. For the group to be successful we need to target achievable and meaningful objectives.
So in our first year we ran an online survey to gather some information from group members on issues such as the relevance of current W3C accessibility specifications, and key challenges to creating and delivering accessible online learning. A summary of the survey findings is available on the wiki.
Work stream 1: Gap Analysis of current WAI resources. This will look at current WAI resources from the perspective of accessible online learning, to understand what’s there and what might be missing.
Work stream 2: Documenting what the online learning community needs. This is a more blue-sky activity, profiling the “online learning community” and trying to identify what information different stakeholder groups in that community need.
We’re now in the process of organizing how each workstream will operate, and the best way to convey output to the relevant WAI Working Groups so that it has positive impact.
We’ll make sure to document progress and output via email and on the wiki, so you can keep track on what we’re doing. And if you’d like to get involved, please join us!
Accessibility is often provided through accommodations. Schools are legally obligated to provide accommodations to enrolled students with identified disabilities, based on their needs—sign language interpreters in lectures for deaf students, digital copies of textbooks for students who are blind or have reading difficulties, extended time on exams for students who need more time due to cognitive or physical disabilities.
With online learning, the obligations are less clear—for example, with MOOCs, where students around the world are taking courses but are not enrolled at the sponsoring school or organization. Also, accommodations are not well established—sign language interpreters and note takers are typically accommodations for the physical classroom. How does an organization ensure they are meeting obligations and giving online students the support they need participate fully and to be successful?
Providers of online learning are best off delivering courses that are accessible out-of-the-box, without the need for special accommodations. And many of the features that provide an accessible experience for people with disabilities benefit all learners. For example, lecture transcripts are an excellent tool for study and review. However, without deliberate attention to the technologies, standards, and guidelines that comprise the Web Platform, accessibility may be difficult to achieve, and learners with disabilities may be left behind.
The activities of the Accessible Online Learning W3C Community Group take place at the intersection of accessibility and online learning. We focus on reviewing current W3C resources and technologies to ensure the requirements for accessible online learning experiences are considered. We also identify areas where additional resources and technologies are needed to ensure full participation of people with disabilities in online learning experiences.
This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2015-04-10 by Sarah Horton. The following people supported its creation: Sarah Horton, Trisha Salas, Armony ALTINIER, Sarven Capadisli, Matt Obee, Dónal Fitzpatrick. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.
