Notes from the Sixth Accessibility SIG Meeting

Back to SIG Meetings Index 2004.

Click on topic (6 topics) to move to section:
Introduction and Welcome.
RDF and Accessibility.
Gizmos, Thingamabobs and Whatnots!
A British Standard for the Accessibility of e-Learning Systems and Content.
Discussion on the BSI Accessibility Standard.
Feedback from the Discussion.

The Sixth Accessibility SIG Meeting was held at the University of Salford, Manchester on 25 May 2004.

Introduction and Welcome.

The Accessibility SIG Co-ordinator gave the introduction and welcome. Lisa Corley, CETIS Pedagogy Forum Co-ordinator briefly mentioned the e-Portfolios: Pedagogical and Social Issues event, which will be held in Liverpool on 30th June 2004.

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RDF and Accessibility.
by Jonathan Chetwynd, peepo.

Jonathan Chetwynd, who has been working with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for around six years, gave an introduction to the RDF (Resource Description Framework) schema for accessibility.

What do we mean when we talk about web accessibility? For many people, it has come to mean technological accessibility. However, Jonathan feels that accessibility should be more user-centred and has invented the term "qualia" to describe a user's individual and personal values, which cannot really be qualified.

The peepo website (closed December 2004) was created in 1998 by Jonathan as a portal for people with learning difficulties, who were unable to read. Many users with learning difficulties do not have mouse skills and peepo has a "leaves resource", which can help develop these skills. Students collected leaves, which were photographed and turned into an interactive resource. The mouse can be used either to "paint" leaves onto the screen or to clear them away. It was important to the developers of peepo that the students themselves were involved in creating the resource, especially as students with learning difficulties may benefit from more interactive experiences, such as games.

The peepo website also helps to develop literacy. For example, if the letter "c" is typed in the radio section of the peepo site, a list of resources beginning with "c" is presented, e.g. Capital Radio, ChoiceFM, and ClassicFM. Favicons are also used so that a student can put them on the desktop and go straight through to the peepo resource.

CCF (Concept Coding Framework) allows useful concepts to be extracted and then matched to any graphic or symbol. For example, some people with learning difficulties have no concept of a red bus if they have only ever been on a green bus. Therefore, using CCF would allow the concept of a bus to be matched to a symbol of a red bus or a green bus.

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) have been used on the peepo website and allow larger borders or higher contrast around images to be set. Also, if an image of a beer glass is clicked on, a range of images concerning beer is presented. Including some RDF text with the image ensures that users can find the relevant images. There is no limit to the amount of RDF text that can be written for each image and text can be agglomerated from different RDF files to produce a "super" description for the image.

RDF is a tool for annotation, such as games and text and can be created by using a Creative Commons tick box licence on the Creative Commons website. It can also be thought of in a similar way to the CD database. For example, when a CD (Compact Disk) is played using an online media player, the player will also display information about the CD, music or band. RDF can also be used to develop individual RDF schemas but there may then be an issue with interoperability.

An image annotator is available for describing separate parts of an image using RDF. For example, a photograph of a duck could include a description of its bill, wings and tail as separate entities on the actual image.

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Gizmos, Thingamabobs and Whatnots!
by Sue White, Virtual College, Coleg Sir Gar.

Sue White gave a demonstration of some of the new tools, which have been developed by her team.

A Flash drag and drop tool has been developed, which uses the tab key on a keyboard to move an item around the screen. A number of materials for customer care were being developed and the team took the opportunity to develop drag and drop exercises using the keyboard. One activity involved putting the various parts of the recruitment process in order and another, involved selecting the correct time zones across the world from a list of possible answers. This exercise was a further development of a previous activity, tested by the RNCB (Royal National College for the Blind) where counties could be dragged and dropped onto a map of Britain.

A warning tool has been developed, which will identify if a web-based resource contains flickering or too many links.

A template has also been developed, which will allow developers and content authors to include the relevant image information, such as <alt> tag, title, size, URL (Uniform Resource Locator), etc. There is no spellchecker available at present but one is being developed.

One of the main issues has been the tension between accessibility and usability. Web content, which is Bobby AAA compliant and deemed to be accessible, may not necessarily be usable.

Sue has been involved in organising the Dysg E-Learning Conference, which will take place at the University of Glamorgan from 29th to 30th June 2004. A number of presentations, demonstrations and discussions have been scheduled around various strands, including Interoperability, Accessibility and Inclusivity.

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A British Standard for the Accessibility of e-Learning Systems and Content
by Andy Heath, Sheffield Hallam University.

Andy Heath gave an introduction to the BSI (British Standards Institute) work on an accessibility standard, which will provide a focus for recommended best practices. The Initial Outline Proposal for a BSI Standard for Accessible e-Learning has further details.

A standard is a focus around which co-operation and cohesion can grow. There are many standards' organisations, although standards and guidelines, such as those developed by the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) are only part of the solution. There is more to accessibility than WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

The IMS ACCLIP (Accessibility for Learner Information Package) Specification, which may eventually be termed ACCUP (Accessibility User Profile), goes beyond learning and defines how the functional characteristics of a user's preferences can be used for learning instead of actually holding information about a learner's requirements.

The draft IMS ACCMD (Accessibility Metadata) Specification, which may be termed ACCRP (Accessibility Resource Profile), will be published shortly. It describes how content can be tagged for accessibility. For example, a learning object could contain accessibility metadata concerning the type of environment in which it will run or which screen readers will work with it. Work is currently being done on how the ACCMD Specification can be used with current metadata specifications, such as Dublin Core and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) LOM (Learning Object Metadata).

EARL (Evaluation and Reporting Language), developed by the W3C, is based on RDF and requires co-operation across the standards bodies to make it work. EARL statements can describe how accessible a resource actually is. The developers of the ATAG (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines) are encouraging tool manufacturers to make tools, which will produce output in EARL.

However, conformance is not always meaningful and it is possible to have a positive accessibility statement without considering conformance. So what does this mean for developers and content authors? This is where the proposed BSI standard should help, as it will be specific to the UK (United Kingdom) and will be pulling together work that has already been done.

The first meeting to discuss the proposed standard took place on 24th May 2004 at Sheffield Hallam University. Around 18 organisations expressed an interest in contributing to the standard with around 15 people taking part. During this meeting, the scope of the standard was discussed and will cover the following:

• Architectural framework - a description of how the pieces of the different standards fit together and the schemas that can be used.
   
• Behavioural framework - how the different frameworks can be used together, e.g. learner preferences, metadata, the interoperability between the two. More discussion is required to develop this further.
   
• Assessment is still under discussion but may be included and may incorporate some of the current BSI work on assessment, with a description of how it fits into the accessibility architecture (note: in this instance, assessment means testing, such as examinations, rather than the actual assessment of a person's disability).
   
• Cognitive disabilities will probably not be separated out but will be included in the same way as other disabilities.
   
• It will also make recommendations for the use of other standards and may recommend the use of different kinds of tools for accessibility.
   
• The standard will be aimed at system designers, content specifiers, content commissioners, content developers, accessibility communities, and tool developers.
   
• At the moment the timescale is still unknown, although it may take a year for the standard to be developed.

The standard will not be drawing together lists of good practice as there is no central or obvious place to find good practice. A centralised service may need to be set up but this is beyond the scope of the standard. Also, as British Standards are not compulsory, there should not be any legal cases.

If anyone would like to be involved in the work, please contact Andy Heath. The ACollab accessible collaborative software will be used to co-ordinate the work.

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Discussion on the BSI Accessibility Standard.

Andy Heath then gave the group a chance to discuss and provide feedback on the proposed BSI standard and to highlight the important issues, use cases and scenarios. Andy will be writing some business cases. However, some or the arguments for such a standard include:

• Management of organisation resources (reduced costs).
• Inclusivity and online systems (reduced costs).
• Procurement could be easier.
• Legislation requirements could be fulfilled.
• Clarification of what could be considered "reasonable adjustments".

The group were then asked to draw up business arguments of why such a standard is, or is not, necessary. It is important to get scenarios from people about how this standard would, or would not, work.

The whole group split into four smaller groups and were asked to either:

• Focus on user and resource profiles and to create a scenario with an imaginary, but realistic, user in order to determine what information needs to be recorded in the user's and the resource's profile. Assessment could also be included; or
• Write a business case for, or against, the standard. What are the arguments?

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Feedback from the Discussion.

Comments on the Proposed Standard.

• Doubts about what could be achieved by having a BSI standard.
• Confusion - there are lots of standards out there already and people don't seem to understand them. If people in the group do not feel that they understand all the standards that are available, then it is difficult to expect other people to use them. It would also be useful to see implementations of the current standards and some working examples first.
• What about work-based learning, e.g. the NHSU (National Health Service University)?
• Where does it sit in the education framework?
• What are the legal implications?
• What about certification and accreditation of the resource as it is difficult to claim conformance to standards?
• Is a user the best-placed person to know their own preferences, especially is they are not technologically experienced?
• People may not want to pay for a standard.
• Don't forget the user!
• What level is the standard aimed at?
• Will it be very prescriptive or can developers work out what they need to do and just use the standard for guidance in a holistic way, as it was not clear whether the focus for the standard was as a guidance model? (The standard will be for guidance).
• It would be useful to be given a formula on how to tackle accessibility.

User Scenario 1.

• User's Profile: Nursing student with dyslexia.
• Needs/Preferences: Simple, clear language; Ability to select font, colour etc; Ability to select graphic- or text-heavy; Speech output; Voice input for responses.
• How would a standard achieve this? In this case the BSI standard would suggest that the ACCLIP Specification would be useful in this situation.

User Scenario 2.

• A learner's profile should not be static but should evolve with the person's learning and when they move into employment.
• If a user has particular preferences, a form could be filled in identifying their preferences, from which other suggestions could be given by the system. For example, Amazon suggests other books based on a user's preferences.