Mid-South Instructional Technology Conference
Teaching, Learning, & Technology
The Connected Classroom
April 7-9, 2002
Web-Based Modifications for Students with Special Needs; A Starting Point
|
By: David Currie, Delbert Hall, Rosalee Seymour |
Proceeding
Abstract:
Legislation has made it necessary for government and commercial websites to make available online services for all persons using the Internet, including those with special visual and audio needs. Educators need to prepare websites for all students, not just those with full vision and hearing. We do not wish the role of content conversion to suitable formats to fall upon the Disabilities Office, although they, and the students they serve are valuable resources. Nor do we wish to fall into the passive position of producing image-free sites for persons with visual disabilities or audio-free sites for persons with hearing disabilities.
Introduction:
Our goal is to produce a small number of model online courses that can be used as guides for others as they work to develop websites that will make rich content available to all students. We hope to work with our Disabilities Office and students with special needs at our campus in an attempt to achieve this goal. We have recently decided to include groups of adult students from across a broad age spectrum in order to determine if (and if, how) age should be considered as an additional important factor in site design. From the outset, we have identified three concerns.
We Must Not Oversimplify the Problem: Many of the sites we visited in order to gain insight into web design for persons with special needs left us with a bad taste in our mouth, a feeling shared by a number of persons with special needs. A number of these sites and their accompanying “page evaluation” systems are more highly regarded by institutions than by individuals. We were more than a little surprised to find, for example, that the home page of the company which owns one of the most highly touted special needs site evaluation systems on the Internet, fails to receive approval when tested with their own system.
There is a general tendency towards oversimplification of websites for persons with special needs. While some of the modifications are better for all (presumably, none of us would regret complete elimination of frames), other modifications represent the loss of potential learning material. Some general tactics, for example, include discarding images, dynamic HTML and video files, eliminating tables, reducing the number of links and removing forms. Where forms are removed, they are often replaced by telephone numbers. We might agree that some of these elements are best removed from the navigation system, but not entirely removed from a website. What is often left is a bland, text only document, to be read by a rather bland text reader which is most often lacking in the area of so-called “artificial intelligence.” Those who experience generic text readers for the first time are generally surprised at the failure of the best, most expensive text readers to handle even the simplest of punctuation in an even remotely human fashion.
We Must Maintain Richness of Content: Students with visual disabilities are not averse to surfing sites with plenty of rich visual content. Nor are students with hearing disabilities averse to visiting sites with music and sound. Visual content that aids in the learning process must be described, to those who cannot see it, in exacting detail. Your Disabilities Office can help you find persons with professional experience in providing such descriptive narrations. The typical alternate text tag provided on most sites is wholly inadequate. Historically, alternate text tags were designed for those surfing with browser images turned off; no one we asked has ever actually done this. On the other hand, a highly detailed description of the material contained in a figure or in a table, along with some interpretation of that material, proves beneficial not only to students with visual disabilities, but to all students. Similarly, a detailed text description of a piece of music, for example, is beneficial not only to students with hearing disabilities, but to all students seeking to determine the reason for inclusion of a particular piece of music on a particular web page, or to better understand a piece of music in a music class.
Many students will benefit from online “voice overs” which incorporate the recorded voice of the professor. “Voice-over” presentations, in which an instructor records a discussion of material, are easily created using PowerPoint or FlashCam. We recommend that “voice-overs” should generally accompany slides pertinent to the curriculum, but a picture or two of an instructor is not entirely unforgivable. Similarly, all students benefit from 3-D imaging, particularly where students with visual disabilities have access to “3-D relief printers.” From a purely technical aspect, computers are probably not too far from allowing users to determine the shape of 3-D objects using a joystick-like device that will generate resistance as one probes about the perimeter of a 3-D onscreen object. In fact, such devices may soon allow one to experience the sensation of “viscosity,” by allowing one to probe that are not solid. We are already at the point at which synchronous discussion using text or voice based chat is possible. While many students prefer text-based chat (which allows them to print a discussion), instructors should be prepared to encourage voice-based chat where students with visual disabilities are among those enrolled in class.
We Must Re-Assess Navigation Strategies: Navigation is a recurring nightmare for us. The mid-90’s brought us two-dimensional navigation strategies that called for nesting of folders within folders. This led to the creation of a lot of two-dimensional, textbook like websites. The close of the 21st century brought us more nearly perfect navigation strategies, allowing most of us to develop a 3-dimensional approaches to navigation, and allowing visitors to our sites to get anywhere within the site with a maximum of 2 or 3 clicks. As most educators have realized, a good navigation scheme is central to the development of a good class website.
In developing a suitable navigation strategy, we continue to consult with students with special needs, as well as computer novices of all ages (including retired persons). We know that the navigation scheme needs to be uniform, and that it must be usable by all who surf our sites. The navigation scheme must not be overly complex. While it does not need to be strewn out on every page of the site, it must be accessible via a common link location on every page (this means one extra click to get anywhere, but eliminates problems associated with text readers). It must be large enough to be easily read and link colors (including visited and active) should be altered from the traditional in order to be more clearly identified as links by persons with red-blue color blindness. It should not involve forms or tables that are so “code complex” as to burden the non-artificial intelligence of text readers. Text readers chew through navigation tables like out of control lawnmowers, scattering audible HTML coding as they go. To appreciate how awkwardly text readers handle forms, tables and links, one has to download a text reader and use it to surf one’s own site. Try maneuvering around your site using only your text reader as a guide (ie. with your eyes closed).
Conclusion: For many of us, modifying our instructional websites to make them more amenable to a larger audience means throwing out, in particular, outmoded navigation elements. We use the term “outmoded,” here, to indicate that, unless a navigation structure is usable by nearly everyone, it may soon be subject to challenge as no longer being acceptable. We also question the premise that the best solution to dealing with disabilities is to provide text-only versions of our websites. While this may make the websites more amenable to persons with Braille readers available, it is a stop-gap measure which we see as directing someone to a Braille reader and away from our instructional website. Working directly with individuals with special needs is a sure-fire method of determining what modifications are necessary, and this may be particularly true of any attempt at simplifying navigations strategies.