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Standards and accessibility
The Accessibility Special Interest Group (SIG)
The CETIS-TechDis Accessibility SIG is one of five groups established by the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS). Its first aim is to make implementors of content and systems for learning technology in the Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) sectors aware of accessibility issues.
The SIG then aims to give guidance on accessibility to those developing or implementing learning technologies and to those creating e-learning content. It will also aim to promote communication flow between the FE and HE community and the specification producers. It will act as a discussion and dissemination forum, focusing on good practice in making learning technology accessible to all.
Standards and Specifications
Accessibility issues cut across most of the IMS specifications, including Metadata, Profiles, Simple Sequencing, Learning Design and Question and Test Interoperability (QTI). The Accessibility SIG will focus on the IMS Accessibility Guidelines, which have been produced for those involved in creating e-learning content and systems and will track issues of accessibility across the relevant IMS specifications and those of other standards bodies as appropriate. It will work with the other CETIS SIGs to support the Accessibility specific extensions to various IMS specifications.
Activities
The Accessibility SIG aims to meet on a quarterly basis. One of its key roles will be to advise the other SIGs on the significance and relevance of accessibility in e-learning systems. The group will also gather the requirements of the FE and HE sectors and feed them back via CETIS to the relevant standards bodies.
Workshops will be made available either via TechDis’ established round of events or via specialist events run by the Accessibility SIG. Materials will also be produced for TechDis and the other SIGs to use at their events, for developers and content authors, and for use on the website. It is envisaged that the website will act as a resource for items relating to accessibility and learning technology and will include details of other accessibility specifications, relevant documents and links.
Developments in Accessibility across all the relevant IMS standards will be tracked and disseminated to the UK FE and HE communities.
Who should join the Accessibility SIG?
Accessibility issues are of importance to all those involved in developing learning technology or creating content for it. The SIG will focus on creation and implementation (i.e. on content authors and on developers) rather than on the users themselves. It will therefore be open to those interested in the accessibility issues facing learning technology developers from all UK FE and HE institutions.
Further Details
For further details, please visit the Accessibility website or contact Sharon Perry (Accessibility SIG Co-ordinator) at the University of Wales Bangor by e-mail on: s.perry@bangor.ac.uk.
Lawrie Phipps at TechDis (the Accessibility SIG’s Partner) can be contacted by e-mail on: lawrie.phipps@ltsn.ac.uk.
There is a JISC Mailing List available at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/CETIS-ACCESSIBILITY.html.