On 14 January 25 I went to a STEM Professional development event that was pitched as an introduction to digital accessibility compliance. Although I felt that I already felt that I knew quite a bit about accessibility (after being employed on an OU accessibility project, and tutoring on an accessibility module for a good few years), I thought it might be useful to go along to make sure that my knowledge is as up to date as possible.
What follows are some key points that I noted down during the session, along with a few additional related points that appeared in my inbox the following morning. In writing this blog, I offer a perspective, and thoughts drawn from study and previous experience. These notes present a personal interpretation rather than a summary of what was presented.
OU students
I made a note that there are 36k students who are studying with the university who have declared a disability, but this number might be higher, since there isn’t a requirement to disclose.
The university must be anticipatory, which means that it must be proactively prepared to provide support for disabled students. Some early points of the session included the importance of the social model of disability. This is the notion that people are disabled through society rather than a specific impairment. This is a principle that should guide responses. It is also important to consider disability and accessibility holistically; it is necessary to build in accessibility by design.
Since started as a tutor, I have noticed a change to the disability profiles that are shared. This is information available to tutors to help them understand the needs of students; they are now a lot more detailed than they ever be.
I learnt that student accessibility profiles draw upon six categories of profile that have been based on real people. A point that was emphasised is that profiles are different from personas, for the reason that every student is different.
Legislation and standards
A number of pieces of legislation were mentioned: the Equality Act, public sector bodies regulations, and EU legislation.
In terms of standards, there is WCAG, of which there are different versions, and different levels of compliance. The university currently aims to gain the ‘AA’ level of compliance, the current benchmark, for WCAG 2.2.
Here is an important new bit that I took away from this session; there is a new standard, WGAG 3, which is a working draft as of 12 December 2024.
Digging a bit further, there is a simple abbreviation which gets to the essence of what WGAG is all about: POUR, which is short for Previable, Operable, Understandable and Robust.
Development and support
Another important point I took away was that accessibility takes time, effort, patience and expertise. One of the things that was emphasised in the module that I was a tutor on was the importance of a community of practice (CoP). Put simply, a community of practice is a group of people who know how to do stuff. A community of practice can facilitate peer support and sharing of expertise, and can help to empower others who are involved in the provision of accessibility.
It was interesting to hear about changes. Accessibility support used to be provided through a team in the Institute of Educational Technology, but this has moved to the Accessibility and User Experience (AUE) team. There is something called the OU accessibility champions network (which is an internal site) which facilitates sessions for advocacy, learning and networking.
It was also interesting to hear about something called the Accessibility Compliance Toolkit (ACT), which is another internal resource. It provides a set of ten tests, and offers help with how to provide a basic accessibility statement. At this point, I remembered another toolkit that can be helpful for module development: the university’s inclusive curriculum toolkit.
Related points
I'm fairly technical. It was good to be reminded of the challenges that accompany the ensuring of the accessibility of non-written notation, such as mathematics (and programming languages). It was also useful (and interesting) to hear different screen readers mentioned, such as Jaws and NVDA which is used to test OU materials.
On the morning that I was about to collate these notes, I was sent a reminder by the OU library services to tutors about services and resources that are available for students. Tutors were reminded to make students aware of the alternative versions of module materials that are available on module website, which are available in the Resources/Download section of every module website.
It was through this email that I learnt of a service I had never heard of before. If ever there is the need to convert one digital learning resources into another form, the library provides a service called SensusAccess (OU Library), where students can upload files, and specify an output format.
As a related aside, I use an Amazon Kindle for study. Like so many tablets, it contains some useful accessibility features (I’m increasingly having to increase the size of the reading font; it’s connection with audio books is quite helpful too). Earlier this year I wrote a short blog post about a Kindle feature that facilitates the conversion of PDFs into a form that is more native to a Kindle.
A point is, of course, that everyone’s needs are different, which means that everyone will use digital media and conversion tools differently.
Reflections
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been editing module materials. As I’m working through everything, I’m regularly returning to the important theme of accessibility. A question that was posed in this session was: are there any quick wins? When it comes to module materials, the recommendation is to break down an update into stages.
In turn, I’m thinking of how to provide UML diagrams in accessible formats, enabling students are able to interact with them, and manipulate them. This also provides advantages for everyone; it helps students to potentially gain experience of using of digital tools. There are two different tools: a free tool, and a trial version of a commercial product. I’ve been working with the commercial product, but the free tool might be the way to go. When I’m through with updating the text of the module, and I know what diagrams are remaining, I need to do some experiments, with the notation, and also using a screen reader.
I’m concluding with three points: what remains important, what has been updated, and what is new to me. The social model of disability remains important. WCAG has been updated; I need to have a look at WCAG 2.2 and see what version 3 is all about. What is new to me is new(ish) university structures that support accessibility.
It’s now time that I return to module, TMA and exam editing. It’s all go at the moment.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks for Jade Matos Carew who presented the session with help from Victoria Pearson.