How to ensure accessibility of documents, published at masaryk university

Radek Pavlíček, Teiresias Centre, Masaryk University, Brno

How to ensure accessibility of study materials,

published at Masaryk University

Mission of Teiresias Centre is to guarantee accessibility of all study programmes at Masaryk University. Nowadays we quite often face issues connected with documents inaccessibility.

Although we are able to prepare materials, meeting the accessibility requirements, there is still a lot what should be done to ensure better accessibility of study materials in general and make the preparation easier.

hundreds of students with special needsthousands of employees

Although the vast majority of university students with special needs in the Czech Republic are students of Masaryk University, it is true that study materials are almost exclusively created and published with respect to the needs and preferences of students without special needs.

Changes, leading to the document accessibility, are often made only with an intuition and empathy and reflect only needs of particular student.

Our mission is to change this state and prepare a conception of complex universal learning design environment, in which following goals are reached according to the general standards and regardless this or that specific kind of accessibility is currently required.

In this presentation I would like to focus on demands and needs of students with visual impairment.

Theirs demands can be covered mostly by technical means and authors could quite easily learn them and start to use them.

Accessible PDFSufficient contrast

Good structure

Resources

Resources, in which study materials are published, and ways, how they are created, are very heterogeneous. A couple of examples follows.

Document Server IS MUNI

Resources – ELPORTÁL

Masaryk University – University Press

Books

Slajdy

YouTbe

Current state is strongly influenced by a lot of factors – we will focus mostly

on human, legal and technical.

Affecting factors

Affecting factors

Human

TechnicalLegal

Human factors

• Authors don´t have sufficient awareness and knowledge about accessibility or they aren´t interested in accessibility.

• Students don´t have sufficient knowledge how to use their assistive technologies to read study materials they are provided.

• Sometimes it´s quite difficult to get the information which study materials student really needs.

Legal Factors

• There is no conception yet in evaluating accessibility of study materials. Nowadays it´s is done only on demand.

• Authoritative source of techniques, practical advices and tutorials how to create accessible study materials (or documents in general) is missing.

Technical factors

• Students have outdated technical equipment (screen readers, screen magnifiers).

• Some “umbrella web portal”, gathering all the information about accessibility, links to the other resources, contacts, help, etc. is missing.

• There are accessibility issues concerning not only the study materials, but also the environment in which they are presented.

• There is no way how to in time and easily get the information that student with special needs enroll for concrete course.

Here are my suggestions, how to fix some issues in human, legal and

technical factors mentioned before.

Suggestions

Suggestions

Human

TechnicalLegal

Human factors

• Accessibility training courses for authors.• Wider technical and methodological

assistance to authors of study materials.

Legal factors

• Include a duty to create accessible documents as a part of some university directive.

• The proposed EU Directive on the accessibility of public-sector bodies’ websites.

Technical factors (1/2)

• To have a possibility to get information from Masaryk University Information System, that student with special needs enrolled for concrete course.

• To have a permanent approach to sources which can be an alternative for standard printed study materials, which are not publicly available.

Technical factors (2/2)

• To have a tool, enabling automatic accessibility evaluation of study materials, which are uploaded to Masaryk University Information System.

• To create Web portal (e.g. pristupnost.muni.cz), gathering all the information about accessibility and universal learning design, contacts, tutorial, directives/guidelines, etc.

Conclusion

Topic of universal learning design and accessibility of study materials is extremely wide. But some ways are quite easy to implement.

Education

University web portal, concerning accessibility

Promotion of accessibility

Contact info

pavlicek@teiresias.muni.cz@radlicek

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