Making the Web Accessible

This week we are studying accessibility. I had no idea how little I knew.

As I was looking through the resources, I realized that before the college can provide accessible online courses, colleges have to train the designers to make the information accessible in the first place! My background is publishing; I made thousands of pdfs for a MAJOR book publisher and not ONCE was I asked to make it accessible. I didn’t know anything about pdf accessibility! And I can tell you, I know A LOT about pdfs. And guess what? I watched the Adobe video on how to make an accessible pdf and it is easy to do! Not only that, but it is even easier to make the files accessible in the native authoring program, i.e. InDesign. I have put together entire textbooks with InDesign. And guess what? I didn’t know there were accessibility features. I’m saying all of this to make a point. Most things that show up in a web course has to be created elsewhere first. Accessibility is hidden in the files, where the average user doesn’t see them. But these hidden instructions mean something to screen readers.

I think that when someone is designing a poster, or a math book, the person isn’t thinking that one day that material may be on the web. Sometimes we must think of where our product might end before we even begin. Accessibility is one of those times.

I realize I am probably the only person in the class who uses InDesign rather than Word. So I went to the Microsoft website and found this video about how to make Word documents accessible.

Video: Find and fix accessibility issues in Word 2010

Excuse me while I change some of the colors in my web site….

October 5, 2011 0

Constructivism, Situated Learning, and the Selfish Learner

In Researching Current Issues, the authors argue that the best approach to teaching “is to ground all learning as much as possible in tasks, activities, and problems that are meaningful to the student.” (Tiene, D., & Ingram, A., 2001) Simple albeit profound, learning is about the student! If the student learns something important to them, then they will learn not only what interest them but many peripheral facts as well. Ahhh! That’s why I can listen to tapes on how do use a particular software, go through the exercises, and still not retain the knowledge! Not only does it put me to sleep after a while, but if the exercises do not mean anything to me personally, I have a motivation problem and forget what I have learned quickly. That’s why I work better as I follow along if I am working on a real-world project. So, selfishly, I get the project done, and I also learn the task of running the software!

This would also work if I was given a task to make a web page on cloud computing. I would need to research cloud computing and I would have to learn the skills necessary to construct a web page. In addition, if my assignment is to share the web page with the class and to discuss it with others, then according to Mason, R., & Rennie, F., (2008) I have pursued my “‘selfish interest’ of passing the course while at the same time adding value to the learning of other students.”

References:
Mason, R., & Rennie, F. (2008). E-learning and social networking handbook: Resources for higher education. New York, NY: Routledge.

Tiene, D., & Ingram, A. (2001). Researching current issues in instructional technology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

September 13, 2011 0