20,000 pages and Counting: Improving Accessibility of Files Delivered by Learning Management Systems Krista Greear Access Text and Technology Manager [email protected]
Dec 30, 2015
20,000 pages and Counting: Improving Accessibility of Files Delivered by Learning Management Systems
Krista GreearAccess Text and Technology [email protected]
Background
> Work at Disability Resources for Students> Provide academic accommodations
– Specifically, convert instructional materials like textbooks
> Create documents in a way that can be accessed through visual, auditory and tactile means– large print– electronic version that can be enlarged– pdf or word document to use with text-to-speech
software– comptuer-generated.mp3 file– braille
Game-changing question
My professor distributes electronic readings
through online course system. Can those be
made accessible?
Maybe you’ve heard of these:
> Canvas> Moodle> Blackboard> Desire2Learn> And so on….
At UW, we predominantly use Canvas and Catalyst, a home-grown system.
Discussion boards and files distribution are most commonly used features of LMS on campus.
My questions
>What classes were using LMSs?>What kind of content is distributed
through LMSs?>How much content?>How accessible is it?
Process for File Evaluation
1. Asked to be added to courses LMS. Did this via email.
2. Download all files. 3. Use keyboard shortcuts to get file
names into a template Excel spreadsheet.
4. Had student workers evaluate each file. 5. Aggregate data into one spreadsheet. 6. Ask my questions again.
What classes were using LMSs?What kind of content is distributed through LMSs?How much content?
Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014
# classes evaluated 28 58 28
# files (pdfs, word docs, powerpoint, excel, text files)
1,097 2,003 753
# pages (pdfs, word docs, powerpoint, excel, text files) distributed through LMS that DRS evaluated
20,373 34,492 9,445
How accessible is it? – Word Docs
Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014
# word docs 188(or 17% of all
files)
298 (or 15% of all
files)
144 (or 19% of all
files)# files that had headings 13 (or 7%) 29 (or 10%) 12 (or 8%)
# files that didn’t have headings
175 (or 93%) 269 (or 90%) 132 (or 92%)
How accessible is it? – PDFs text selectability
Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014
# pdfs 806(or 74% of all
files)
1476(or 74% of all
files)
528 (or 70% of all
files)# files that were text selectable that DRS didn't have to convert
633 (or 78%) 1132 (or 77%) 139 (or 27%)
# files that text was not selectable OR text was not accurate
174 (or 22%) 344 (or 23%) 388 (or 73%)
How accessible is it? – PDFs structure*
Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014
# pdfs 806(or 74% of all
files)
1476(or 74% of all
files)
528 (or 70% of all
files)# files that had either tags or bookmarks
162 (or 21%) 373 (or 25%) 84 (or 16%)
# files that had both tags/bookmarks
62 (or 8%) 67 (or 5%) 26 (or 5%)
# files that had neither tags or bookmarks
569 (or 71%) 1030 (or 70%) 418 (or 79%)
*Tags were not evaluated for accuracy merely if they existed
Results summary
> There is a lot of content being distributed through LMSs that has to be purposefully sought out
> Data mining this way is time consuming> 70% of documents distributed are PDFs
– 25% of those PDFs are not text selectable– 75% of PDFs have no structure
> 18% of documents distributed are word docs– 90% of those word docs do not have headings
Accommodation perspective (retroactive)
> Files are created with a specific student or disability in mind– DRS performs accessibility audit of files distributed
through LMS– DRS converts files and return to faculty– Provide software to students to convert materials
themselves (with partnerships on campus)> Scanners, computers and software open to students in ATC
– Have a student-self serve option> SensusAccess: online file conversion system for quick,
temporary solution
> Access perspective (have content creators make creating accessible-born documents)– Files are created with everyone in mind
Access perspective (proactive)
> Files are created with everyone in mind– Provide information about how to create accessible
documents >http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/
– Partner with Center for Teaching and Learning to disseminate information and tools like CAR Check
– Work with specific department or faculty member to evaluate and fix files before distributed to class
> Need more experience about faculty perspective