Unlimited possibilities
It might be easy to assume that accessible content must be boring. That there are so many things that need to be checked and thought about that the experience must be less.
It’s just not true.
Yes there are more things to think about but that isn’t a reason to do it. In fact companies are investing in making their offerings more accessible, suggesting that there is enough interest that there is profit to be made, and we would be remiss not to take advantage of it.
A lot of H5P content is accessible, and more is becoming accessible every day. There is even a ‘drag and drop’ that appears to be fully accessible. Notable exceptions to this are the hotspot activities, image sequencing and juxtaposition activities, speak the word activities, and, oddly, questionnaires and personality quizzes.
Microsoft Whiteboard is great for those who are blind or have sight loss and can be interacted with in different ways in terms of navigation and users can add alt text to any content within a board.
I’ve already mentioned the accessibility of Teams and Zoom, though there is some movement for some Zoom accounts bringing it more on par with Teams in terms of close captions and transcripts.
Padlet is another common app that is working on its accessibility. It works with screen readers, though admits to still working on it, but it does not offer colour contrast options. Some parts are keyboard navigable and it is possible to get to, and view, different boards though settings, creating posts or editing posts is not possible through keyboard navigation.
Mentimeter, supports or partially supports all the applicable criteria from the WCAG 2.0 guidelines, though having a set time for questions is an issue and something to think about in your set up. Kahoot too appears to meet accessibility standards and offers support in this area.
VLEs will have their own statements about their accessibility but Blackboard is particularly good in that it has the Blackboard Ally extension which, in addition to being accessible itself, helps make all content stored or created in the VLE accessible.
Non of this means you don’t need to check for yourself, there is no ‘Nicola said’ clause, but it does show that there is still a vast range of activities that are available when you make accessible content.
Innovative technologies are not to be left out either.
Different companies in the VR and AR spaces are working to make their offerings as inclusive as possible. No easy thing for technology that rely on visual and audio clues but the work is going in, one is even working to make a digital version of a cane, so we can be fairly certain that there will be at least some success. Possibly about the same time that the headsets and other accoutrements are at a price point where they become a viable option.
Gamers hold a place in my heart for various reasons, not least because they often take matters into their own hands. AbleGamers forged their own path in creating accessible gaming resources, creating the basis for the Xbox adaptive controller and a certification course to design games with an eye for accessibility. An accessible game development bootcamp is offered by Microsoft.
But you came here for talk about learning not gaming so why do I mention it?
Two reasons really. The first the increasing evidence for using gamification within the toolkit of learning activities. The second is is that gaming is an incredibly intense field built around interacting with devises and content. If accessibility can be improved there, without a drop in the quality of experience for all, there is no reason educators can’t leverage that creativity.
