Geraldine Huzar - The Open University and accessibly learning
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The document discusses accessibility of online content at The Open University. It notes that 17.1% of the university's students have a disability. Common disabilities impacting online learning include mental health issues, fatigue/pain, learning difficulties, mobility issues, and sight or hearing impairments. The university works to make its online module content, library resources, and databases accessible through clear formatting, screen reader compatibility, captions, and flexibility. However, some content like PDFs, images, videos and tables can present problems. The university works with publishers and provides conversion services to improve accessibility when possible. The challenges of ensuring content is accessible before purchase are also discussed.
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Geraldine Huzar - The Open University and accessibly learning
- 1. The Open University and accessible learning ShERIF event 24th February 2017 Geri Huzar
- 2. The Open University • Distance learning institution • 127,937 students (November 2016) • Disabled students 21,934 (17.1%)
- 3. Category Number Impact for online content… Mental health 9383 • Flexibility, alternatives Fatigue/pain 6449 • Flexibility, alternatives Learning difficulty 5700 • Clear fonts and colours • Compatibility with text reader • Support for own settings Unseen 5341 • Flexibility, alternatives Mobility 4291 • Physical access Other 3006 • Flexibility, alternatives Manual skills 2182 • Keyboard access • Compatibility with voice recognition Sight 1462 • Clear fonts and colours • Compatibility with screenreader and magnifier • Support for own settings Hearing 1348 • Captions/transcripts Autism 1102 • Flexibility, alternatives Speech 452 • Support with spoken tasks or alternative Total 40716
- 4. Delivering learning at a distance • Module material authored by academics (OU published content) • Students may be provided with a text book or will be expected to buy books (Materials Procurement Dept) • Module content will include third party Library subscription resources © Oleg66/iStockphoto.com 26-09-13 © Oleg66
- 5. 85 highly skilled professional and support staff 102,000 visits to the OU Library website and 70,000visits to Library Search per month 600databases, 135,000 ejournals/magazines & over 200,000 ebooks* 1st The OU Library helpdesk was the first UK HE to provide a 24/7 webchat service, in which we continue to lead the way 5.4 million downloads from Open Research Online. The Open University's open access repository of research publications 34,000 people connecting with @OULibrary through social media Library Services: at a glance 85% surveyed in the 2016 National Student Survey agree library resources and services are good enough for their needs
- 6. Proactive accessibility • Academic Liaison Librarian supports module team in choosing accessible content or making reasonable adjustments • Test accessibility of databases and feedback to publishers on platform and sample content • Database accessibility tips for students • Test accessibility of individual ebooks, journal articles and videos
- 7. Accessibility requirements • Accessibility requirements for database platforms and full text standards publishers version –Library Services has specific responsibility for:- • Anticipating the needs of disabled students • Ensuring students with a disability are able to achieve digital and information literacy skills learning outcomes • OU web accessibility guidelines –“….to make the most of the internet whatever their ability or disability.”
- 8. Some problems with content • PDF –Image, read across columns, • Tables –Image • Videos and audio –Subtitles, transcript, media player • Figures Pixabay
- 9. Liaising with publishers • Worked with individual publishers • Come to the OU, so can demonstrate problems to them Pixabay
- 10. Reactive accessibility • Helpdesk – email, phone, 24/7 web chat • SensusAccess – automated conversion service • Conversion – manually create accessible tables, provide figure descriptions • Supported literature search © eyetoeyePIX/iStockphoto.com 01-11-12 © eyetoeyePIX
- 11. Challenges • Providing content that will be accessible to as many students as possible • Can’t try before you buy • Interpreting the law, i.e. commercial availability of material in a more accessible format • Keeping up to date with database testing • Non standard notation: maths, science Pixabay
- 12. Future developments • Reviewing how we provide accessible content in light of internal and external changes • Audio descriptions for videos • Improving guidance to students on how to make the most of accessibility in formats such as EPUB © 017206184/iStockphoto.com 02-15-13
- 13. Library Services The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA www.open.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
- Fiona Bowtell presenting for her but Geri is here to answer questions.
- Useful to start off giving you some statistics about the Open University and accessibility , for context. The OU teaches through its own unique method of distance learning, called ‘supported open learning' and it is the largest academic institution in the UK more than 1,100 full-time academic staff nearly 6,000 tutors more than 3,500 support staff As at November 2016, there nearly 128,000 students studying with the OU. Includes undergraduate and postgraduate. Of those studying almost 22,000 or 17.1% had declared a disability. There has been a gradual annual increase in the proportion of students with a registered disability. It was 14.4% in 2014 and 15.7% in 2015.
- OU provides training to staff about writing accessible content for the web and this is one of the slides used in the presentation. It shows the different categories of disability at the OU and how many students there are in each category. Some students fit into more than one category. For each category it shows what adjustments need to be considered to make online content more accessible. Some adjustments benefit more than one disability. For example clear fonts and colour would help people with learning difficulties such as dyslexia and those with sight difficulties too.
- Academics write module material, which is delivered to students online using Moodle. Ensuring the content is accessible will be factored in during the production process. Some modules may also provide students with a textbook, as part of their module material. This is often provided in print and also as an ebook on the VitalSource platform. Other modules require students to buy books. The Materials Procurement Department, which is not part of the Library liaises with publishers to obtain PDFs to provide accessible versions. This can be challenging for older editions. Modules also refer students to third party material, much of which is provided by the Library. Students will be directed to specific articles and books which are essential to their studies and are increasingly expected to carry out independent research as they progress in their studies
- (impossible to be precise because there are lots of ebook type formats and titles that are buried in databases such as C18th Collections online) To provide an introduction to the OU Library, here are some interesting statistics which give an idea of the scale of our interaction with students. For example we provide access to approximately 135,000 ejournals and more than 200,000 books. Each month we have 102,000 visits to the OU Library website and 70,000 visits to Library Search.
- I’ll talk about proactive accessibility first. Academic Liaison Librarians are allocated to a module team and as part of their role they support the academics by suggesting which library resources are suitable for incusion. This includes providing guidance on the accessibility of a resource and help with making any reasonable adjustments needed where material is found to be inaccessible. Although libraries use federated search systems to locate content, some material cannot be found that way, so students need to search individual databases. Databases also offer additional functionality for more in depth searching. Therefore we test the accessibility of databases students are required to use in a module. Testing covers whether the colours can be changed and text enlarged and also keyboard only and screen reader access. The focus is on ensuring students can do a basic and advanced search and access search results as well as testing how accessible a sample of the full text is. The results are passed to publishers, which I will talk more about. Testing results inform our acquisitions policy, for example we took the decision to stop buying books from one eBook platform as it had accessibility problems. Where there are problems, accessibility tips are provided on the library website, both with the link to the database and in a separate section for disabled students. The tips may include the fact that the full text is inaccessible or how to refine your search etc if it isn’t obvious. Where students are directed to access individual ebooks, journal articles and videos, we test their accessibility. If material is found to be inaccessible we then work with the rights holder to address issues.
- When we send our testing feedback to publishers we also provide our accessibility requirements, as guidance. This includes a list of different disabilities and what adjustments to material is needed for each one. The requirements are based on OU guidance. The OU Accessibility guidelines have been created to help enable computer users to make the most of the internet whatever their ability or disability. The guidelines are based on the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and common accessibility issues that are identified in OU accessibility testing.
- I won’t cover ebook content issues, as they are being discussed by other speakers. The accessibility of PDFs greatly varies from a scanned image to one that has been tagged for accessibility, so providing structure for screen readers to navigate round them. Historical content, such as newspapers is often made available as a scanned image which cannot be read by a screen reader. Other problems in PDFs can be where text is provided in columns and a screen readers reads across rather than down each column and also individual words may be misread. In HTML, tables can be created to be accessible to a screen reader, but sometimes they are pasted in as images instead and so are inaccessible. Transcripts are needed for audio content and video content needs transcripts and subtitles or captions. These may be missing or the media player used to play the content is not accessible. For example the play, stop, pause buttons may not be labelled so a screen reader can’t differentiate between them or a keyboard user may not be able to tab between them. Figures such as graphs and charts may need a description if the surrounding text does not adequately convey their meaning.
- We’ve liaised with individual publishers to help improve accessibility of platforms and content. For example some have come to the OU for account meetings, we’ve taken the opportunity to demonstrate accessibility issues to them. It is powerful to show exactly why a screen reader or keyboard user will have a problem with an aspect of a platform or full text. Publishers do need to keep accessibility in mind when they are making small updates to their platform and not just when they are launching a major change. For example the addition of social media widgets has caused accessibility problems with at least two databases, where keyboard only users were not able to tab past them. Another example is where screen reader and keyboard only users were able to get through the process of creating an account , so they could get journal content and search alerts, right up to the point that they pressed the ‘Create’ button which was not accessible without a mouse.
- In addition to improving the accessibility of resources, it is also important to help students to develop their confidence in using them. Students sometimes find they have difficulties accessing resources whilst doing independent research, at these times they can contact the Library Helpdesk in a variety of different ways. We are a member of QuestionPoint cooperative, which provides 24 hour cover, so there is someone to take details of a query even in the middle of the night and then forward it to the Library Helpdesk. We also provide other support, this includes providing tips on the most effective way to navigate resources to screen readers users over the telephone. One way students can make material more accessible independently ,is the online, automated conversion service SensusAccess which can convert material into different formats. For example a PDF to Word, Braille or MP3. It deals well with text in a PDF that would otherwise be inaccessible to a screen reader user because it is an image, but can’t make tables or non-standard notation such as maths and science more accessible than they already are. It is great for simple and urgent conversions, if there is no time to make a more structured document. One student feedback saying it was brilliant and that previously they had asked their 13 year old son to read long journal articles to them. If a student comes across inaccessible library material and needs a table to be made more accessible or a description for a figure these need to be done manually. Where a student has a disability which means they are unable to search Library subscription resources, we do provide a supported literature searching service.
- Examples of some of our challeges: One of our challenges is to provide content which will be as accessible as possible to all our students. We have control over the accessibility of what we produce, but the increasing use of third party content with variable accessibility is a challenge. When a module team want to integrate a book which we don’t already have access to, we aren’t able to test the accessibility of the book before we purchase it. If it is on an existing platform, which is likely, we will know how accessible that is, but not the book itself. There is a legal obligation to check whether material is commercially available in a more accessible format before converting it. How far you extend that search, how much you pay for the commercial version and who pays are problematic. We recently were asked to pay again for access to a book we already had a subscription to on an aggregator platform. The publisher offered to make it available on a different platform at a cost. Keeping up to date with testing databases is a challenge, especially when there are frequent updates to platforms. A crowd sourced approach provided by the Ebook accessibility Audit is a great way to raise awareness on a national level. Making maths and science notation accessible remains a challenge.
- We have been making content accessible to disabled students for a number of years and in light of internal and external changes we are taking the opportunity to review our accessibility provision and make appropriate amendments. Broadcasters (like the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky) must add AD to 20 per cent of their programmes and BBC iPlayer provides them online. The OU is setting up a project to trial providing audio descriptions for essential video content with a particular module. We will also be considering how to do this in the Library. There’s OU project looking at why some disabled students need print of online material. It isn’t intended to stop disabled students having print, but to see if the OU could do more to support them in their use of online resources. The results of the project will feed into improving the existing guidance on making the most of browser settings etc. These will be provided in our OU Computing Guide. We also need to think about this in the Library to ensure that students make the most of formats such as EPUB.