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blog名称:众生平等
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 [国家社科课题研究]Accessibility: What You Should Know
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菩提 发表于 2005/3/16 14:58:57 |
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Accessibility: What You Should KnowBy Jennifer J. Salopek
Accessibility is a buzzword that's been on the lips of people involved with e-learning for many months now. But what is it exactly? Optavia Corporation, a consulting firm that assists with issues of accessibility and usability, defines it as "the ability to use the Internet even when functioning under constraints." Those constraints can be of two types: functional limitations, also known as disabilities, and situational limitations, constraints caused by the devices a user is attempting to use. We would expand Optavia's definition to embrace not only the Internet but all electronic and information technology, as indeed the United States government has done.
In fact, many in the training and development arena presently think of accessibility as only an issue related to government agencies and the vendors who supply them. And, in truth, it is, under current law. In 1998, President Clinton signed the Workforce Investment Act into law, which included amendments to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The part of the legislation most relevant to e-learning developers and their clients is Section 508, which requires that the federal government provide universal access to its electronic and information technology. The Access Board, an independent federal agency devoted to accessibility for people with disabilities, was directed to issue standards that would become part of federal procurement regulations. Those procurement regulations are now used as an enforcement mechanism to make sure that government contractors comply.
The standards were developed by the Access Board's Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory Committee, a group of 27 representatives from industry, disability organizations, and other concerned groups, including the Web Accessibility Initiative. The standards were published in December 2000 and became enforceable on June 21, 2001, and apply to projects procured on or after that date. In general, the standards provide criteria specific to six main categories of technology:
software applications and operating systems
Web-based information or applications
telecommunication products
video or multimedia products
self-contained, closed products, such as information kiosks or fax machines
desktop and portable computers.
Members of the disabled community were taking legal action against non-accessible Websites as early as 1999. In November of that year, AOL was sued by the National Federation of the Blind, which claimed that AOL violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide accessibility features on its site. A similar complaint was made against the organizers of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, by a blind user who found the event's Website inaccessible. The user's position was upheld by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.
Many forward-thinking software and e-learning developers were also working on accessibility issues long before Section 508, as it's colloquially known, became enforceable in June. For example, SmartForce commenced its initiative to study accessibility issues and began incorporating them into its Website, interface, and course designs in early 2000. Later that year, the firm donated $20 million in scholarships to the Association of Rehabilitation Programs in Computer Technology (ARPCT) at Western Michigan University. The scholarships provide for free access by people with disabilities to SmartForce e-learning that already complied with new government standards for accessibility. Sam Adkins, author of the Brandon Hall report The 2001 U.S. Market for Accessible E-Learning writes, "SmartForce's goal is to provide the richest user experience to all users. To achieve this goal [it] is making significant investments to integrate accessibility across [its] entire product line."
Accessibility concerns are being addressed even earlier in the process, too. Macromedia, realizing its leadership position in the e-learning development market, has created an extension to its Dreamweaver Website design software that can be used to test for accessibility and has recently released new Dreamweaver templates that incorporate features to assist with Section 508 compliance. An accessibility kit is also available for use with Flash.
These prominent developers, along with SkillSoft, IBM, Blackboard, THINQ, MindLeaders, and Microsoft, were prescient and aggressive in initiating efforts to address usability concerns long before Section 508 regulations became enforceable. Where appropriate, many vendors chose to make their products compliant with the guidelines issued by the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), upon which the Access Board standards are based. Clearly, as major suppliers to the U.S. government and its agencies, they would have eventually had no choice in the matter. But even as it seems that the vendor community is leading the way in making e-learning accessible for everyone, there still is a sense among some that accessibility remains a "government issue."
In his report, Adkins relates the story of Kathleen Neville, an HRD specialist with the Texas Commission for the Blind who in 1999 was charged with purchasing e-learning for the Commission's 600 employees. Although Section 508 was still just a twinkle in the Access Board's eye, the Commission, with 14 percent of its employees visually impaired and using assistive technologies, had special requirements. Neville put her request for proposals out to the state's three approved vendors, asking them to adapt their products for her employees' needs. Only one company, MindLeaders, agreed to attempt to satisfy the request. MindLeaders began a collaborative process with the Commission that included analysis, testing, and development--and clearly earned a loyal customer in the process.
As Neville's experience demonstrates, sometimes it's the client who must drive progress toward total accessibility for all users. HRD specialists who purchase e-learning products and services can and should demand accessible e-learning. "We must get HR managers to decide what their policies are," says Patricia Brogan, vice president of learning and education at Macromedia. She adds, "At Cisco, it's corporate policy to accessibility-check just as they would spell-check. Companies must make a commitment to be compliant." Kevin Duffer, SmartForce's director of federal sales, agrees, "We must convince corporations that this is not only a government issue."
Private industry can find many compelling reasons to embrace accessible design.
Accessibility is legally smart. During his administration, President Clinton challenged American businesses to employ more people with disabilities. In response, the CEOs of some of the nation's largest companies, including AT&T, Prudential, Compaq, and Johnson & Johnson, sent a letter to Clinton in October 2000. In that letter, they said, "We are…proud to commit ourselves to promoting the recruitment, hiring, and promotion of candidates and employees with disabilities." To that end, those companies pledged to do the following:
target disability in diversity recruitment goals
create partnerships with disability organizations to identify barriers to employment and to identify job candidates
include disability issues as part of diversity training for all employees
ensure that equal access to all company programs is incorporated into early planning
develop and promote reasonable accommodations policies, including the availability of assistive technologies.
Those last two points are tied directly to language in the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires employers to provide "reasonable accommodation" to the known physical or mental limitations of employees or applicants with disabilities, unless it would impose undue hardship. In Title III, the Act specifically addresses job training, stating, "Training courses and examinations related to professional, educational, or trade-related applications, licensing, certifications, or credentialing must be provided in a place and manner accessible to people with disabilities, or alternative accessible arrangements must be offered."
Further, in a ruling in response to a student complaint that distance learning was inaccessible, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights found that "a public entity is expected to take into account its legal obligation to provide communication to persons with disabilities that is 'as effective as' communication provided to non-disabled persons."
It's likely that the requirements for public entities, combined with the rules laid out in the ADA, will soon be extrapolated and combined to mean that corporate employers providing e-learning related to job training and performance will be required to provide accessible programs. Although vendors to the government are currently on the line legally, the organizations providing and requiring the e-learning programs may soon find themselves in positions of liability. As Adkins writes, "Effective lobbying and legal tactics by an increasingly organized and visible [disabled] community have accelerated the process of making schools, movie theaters, hotels, car rental agencies, sports arenas, and virtually all physical locations in the United States accessible. People with disabilities have demonstrated a great deal of cohesion and solidarity in their advocacy movements."
Employing people with disabilities is good business. Pledges to former presidents aside, as the country faces skills shortages among knowledge workers, "the need for knowledge skills in the emerging economy is leveling the playing field for the growing number of well-educated, technically sophisticated people with disabilities," according to Adkins's report. He continues, "There [is] a growing number of well-educated adults with disabilities being matriculated out of the U.S. school systems and into the competitive knowledge economy. These students are entering the workforce with competitive educational credentials and will compete successfully for jobs."
The people you employ and train may have disabilities you don't know about. People with "invisible" disabilities, ranging from attention hyperactivity deficit disorder to learning disabilities to mental illness, are not required to disclose them unless they require special accommodations. That doesn't mean, however, that e-learning is as accessible to those conditions as it is to everyone else. Epilepsy, for example, is an invisible disability--at least most of the time. However, a blink or flicker rate of on-screen elements of between two and 55 megahertz can cause seizures in people with epilepsy. And what of someone with seemingly innocuous color blindness? The 5 to 12 percent of the male population in the United States who can't distinguish red from green may be confounded by snazzy "traffic-light" color coding.
The working population is aging. It's no secret that as humans age, eyesight, hearing, and motor skills can deteriorate. Although those weakened conditions may not necessarily constitute a disability, the aging population obviously would benefit from many accessibility solutions, such as variable font sizes and volume controls. But people develop disabilities as they age, too. In his report, Adkins reproduces a chart that shows that the percentage of the population with a severe disability rises from 3.3 percent at ages 15 to 24, to 25.3 percent at ages 65 to 74.
Employees will demand it. As Adkins notes, "There are over six million students with disabilities in the U.S. K-12 system. Over 30 percent of these students will graduate with a high school diploma. This number has been growing steadily as assistive technology becomes common, inclusion into mainstream classrooms increases, and adaptive instructional strategies become sophisticated at mitigating disability-related learning outcomes."
"There is a wave of kids coming out of the K-12 system that have been mainstreamed and are technologically savvy. In school they have experienced extensive accommodation, and they're good at what they do. Then, they get to the workplace, and they're given inaccessible courseware?" Adkins asked rhetorically in an interview. "It will only take a single phone call" to rectify the situation, he surmises.
Many industry experts maintain that accessible design is just good design. In a white paper on Section 508, Cory Knobel, knowledge integration manager at Optavia, writes, "Features that accommodate people with disabilities also benefit users without disabilities. For example, providing meaningful alternative text to graphics allows users with visual limitations to effectively use speaking browsers. It also allows people who turn off graphics in their browser for faster downloads full use of Websites." Terri Youngblood, principal of consulting firm Accessible Systems, has been working with companies on disability issues since 1994. "Increasing accessibility can help everyone," she says. Pat Brogan at Macromedia adds, "E-learning is what you need, when and how you need it. A product can be compliant but give a much richer experience. The goals of accessibility are consistent with what we're trying to do anyway."
In many cases, corporate developers and purchasers of e-learning may reap the benefits of what the government has sown. "Accessibility is becoming rapidly de facto," says Adkins. "Vendors with tremendous exposure to government contracts have nowhere to go."
"[Section 508] is the biggest sledgehammer there is," agrees Trevor Thrall, director of research and business development at Michigan Virtual University. A nonprofit organization founded in 1998, MVU has a corporate learning services division that provides e-learning solutions to companies in the state of Michigan. MVU has been building accessibility into its corporate solutions since its inception, "whether we're asked to or not," says Thrall. Unfortunately, he says, he still finds awareness of accessibility issues in corporate e-learning "very low."
Lee Ritze, senior director of marketing and professional services at SkillSoft, concurs, "We have not been asked about accessibility by private-sector clients." As SkillSoft found much of its early success with the federal government, the company was necessarily at the forefront of developing accessible e-learning. But, says Ritze, "the reaction of our commercial customers has been, 'That's nice.'" He goes on to say, "I believe that [accessibility] ought to have implications for our commercial accounts."
"You always hope that people want to do the right thing," says Adkins, "but in the case of accessibility, profits were leading learning theory." Now, though, private-sector clients may be getting accessible e-learning by default. SmartForce has developed a new player that will render its entire library of 1,500 courses accessible, and will be designing new courses to be accessible from the start beginning in October 2001. Naturally, the company isn't going to develop two versions of each course, one that's accessible and one that's not.
SkillSoft is taking a more gradual approach. "We're coming down the home stretch," says Ritze. The company had two types of materials to address: the software that delivers SkillSoft's courses, and then each individual course. As of this writing, the company had completed all the programming for the software and was planning for a late October release. It's also working through its 530-course catalog, retrofitting for accessibility and writing text descriptions for graphic elements.
SkillSoft will continue to issue new content in phases. The commercial release will come first, and the compliant version will be available about 60 days later. "We may soon find, however, that there's no sense to these stages," says Ritze.
That will be so as corporate training professionals become more aware of and more demanding of accessibility. Macromedia's Brogan says, "Training managers don't need to worry about whether tools are compliant. They should ask their vendors for guidance and examples. They should say, 'Educate me on what the stakes are.'"
Although the stakes can be high, as in the recent case of Northwest Airlines, which was recently charged with discriminating against people with disabilities and will be possibly subject to a penalty as high as $3 million, most people's motivation is more humanitarian. "There's no us and them; there's only us," says Adkins. "Why would you not strive for accessibility voluntarily?"
Willard Scott, the director of federal business development at SmartForce, sums it up: "It's the right thing to do," he says.
Published: October 2001http://www.learningcircuits.org/2001/oct2001/salopek.html |
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