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E-Learning Challenges
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What Do Course Designers Need to Know About Building Accessible E-Learning? #304

DavidAnderson's avatar
4 years ago

Designing Accessible E-Learning #304: Challenge | Recap

“Why do I keep hearing so much about accessibility?” That question came up in one of my recent training webinars, and it’s just one variation of the types of accessibility questions we hear daily.

For many organizations, creating accessible e-learning is already a business goal and a legal requirement. For others, the concept of accessibility might be new, even if they’ve developed online training for years.

What do we mean by accessible e-learning? For e-learning designers, accessibility means the course is designed for all learners—including those with auditory, visual, mobility, or learning disabilities. This means that people with disabilities can still learn the course material as well as all the other learners.

What do course designers need to know about building accessible e-learning? That’s what this week’s challenge is all about!

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to design a short demo, quiz, or interaction to help course designers learn more about creating accessible courses.

Your example can focus on tool-specific features or general considerations when designing accessible e-learning.

Here are some topic ideas to get you started:

  • Why accessibility matters
  • Accessibility FAQs
  • Accessibility testing tools
  • Using contrast checkers
  • Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 for e-learning
  • Interactive cheat sheets or job aids

Resources

Articulate Training Webinars

Articles and Blog Posts

User Guides

Share Your E-Learning Work 

  • Comments: Use the comments section below to share a link to your published example and blog post.
  • Forums: Start  your own thread and share a link to your published example..
  • Personal blog:  If you have a blog, please consider writing about your challenges. We’ll link back to your posts so the great work you’re sharing gets even more exposure.
  • Social Media: If you share your demos on Twitter or LinkedIn, try using #ELHChallenge so your tweeps can track your e-learning coolness.

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you get started with this week’s challenge, check out the creative ways course designers are using dos and don’ts in e-learning:

Dos and Don'ts in E-Learning #303: Challenge | Recap

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.

Published 4 years ago
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  • Ange's avatar
    Ange
    Community Member
    Fantastic to have all three options. Thank you Jonathan for sharing the support and video. Thinking about long modules with menus made me wonder if it's possible to 'skip navigation' to prevent tabbing through everything before accessing the slide, I am going to look into that. Maybe it will be a matter having a keener eye on design structure and layout.
  • Hello!

    Interesting topic. I'm working on an original demo for this week's challenge, but thought I'd share a discussion I had with the wonderful Katie Riggio over on the Storyline discussion board about making Drag and Drop interactions more accessible:

    https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/issues-retrofitting-accessibility-functions-to-a-former-drag-and-drop-exercise

    TL;DR Drag and Drops can present real obstacles for some users, so building a fallback interaction that can be accessed from the keyboard is good practice.

    Here's my rejigged Star Wars themed demo, which now includes the option to simply Click as well as Drag.

    https://bit.ly/elhc262c
    • CarrieGauthier-'s avatar
      CarrieGauthier-
      Community Member
      This is such a good idea! Did you use separate slides to make the different interactions? Do you think learners would require some additional information about choosing the interaction type? Even something as simple as, "Don't care for drag and drop? Click below to change to a clickable interaction." or something along those lines. Or, do you find that most figure it out on their own?
      • Jonathan_Hill's avatar
        Jonathan_Hill
        Super Hero
        Hi Carrie - yes I used separate slides, with the option to toggle between click or drag on the first question. Once you choose 'click' and answer the first question, you can't revert back to 'drag' and are locked into the 'click' based slides.

        This was mostly an exercise in whether it was possible to convert a drag and drop into a simpler click based interaction and 'hack' the Focus Order to make it more user friendly.

        I would definitely consider adding a bit more guidance in the future, but most users grasped the click/drag toggle switch pretty quickly.
    • fabulalearning's avatar
      fabulalearning
      Community Member
      Thank you for sharing this, Jonathan! I frequently shy away from drag and drops for accessibility reasons and this is a great alternative!
  • Here is the finished up version of what I started last week for the Do/Don't challenge. This has seven Do/Don't lists for designing for users with varying needs. https://360.articulate.com/review/content/512a4d16-7745-4fdf-a9cf-e230bed61aa9/review

    I don't love that the posters I drew content from lump designing for deaf users with hard of hearing users, but they did separate users with low vision from users who use screen readers, so that's a win!
    • CarmenBernadou_'s avatar
      CarmenBernadou_
      Community Member
      Excellent categorization, great info, and lovely design, Berly. Thanks for sharing!
    • DavidGonzalez-8's avatar
      DavidGonzalez-8
      Community Member
      Loved this, Berly. For the first time, I'm aiding a UX designer in making our project accessible by many of these standards. My focus has been on writing alt-text for text-to-speech readers. This drew me to look into other areas that I know my team is working on.

      This was a timely read for a timely challenge. A simple introduction to complex challenges that has me feeling a little more informed. Thanks, Berly!
    • CarrieGauthier-'s avatar
      CarrieGauthier-
      Community Member
      This is fantastic! It's a great way to quickly remind ourselves about the simple things we can do to positivity impact the experiences of our learners. Nice work!
    • Jonathan_Hill's avatar
      Jonathan_Hill
      Super Hero
      Nice! As course designers we do take many of these features and controls a bit for granted, don't we? This helps level the playing field for those who are not as experienced with Rise built courses.
      • Samuel's avatar
        Samuel
        Community Member
        Totally agree, Jonathan. What seems intuitive might really not be.