As learning and development professionals, it is our responsibility to create educational experiences that are inclusive and accessible for all learners. This includes people with physical, sensory, or cognitive disabilities who may interact with training content in a variety of ways.
By building accessibility into eLearning from the start, we can significantly expand the reach and impact of our programs. Accessible design choices also improve the overall user experience for everyone involved.
Follow Accessibility Guidelines and Best Practices
The first step is becoming familiar with general web accessibility guidelines, such as those provided by organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These give recommendations on issues like adding text alternatives for images, providing captions and transcripts for audio, allowing keyboard control of functions, and enabling resizing of text.
It's also important to stay up-to-date on eLearning-specific best practices focused on making online training accessible. Great resources for this include the National Deaf Center's Creating Accessible Online Learning, WebAIM's Introduction to Web Accessibility, and the Office of Disability Employment Policy's Making eLearning Accessible.
Plan for Accessibility from the Outset
Rather than treating accessibility as an afterthought, all eLearning projects should factor it directly into initial design plans and project timelines. I recommend conducting an accessibility-focused review of storyboards, wireframes, prototypes, and test versions well before final release. Building periodic checkpoints into development schedules also helps surface any issues early when they take less time and effort to resolve.
Conduct Assistive Technology Testing
Testing training materials directly through the assistive tools and technologies that disabled learners utilize provides extremely valuable feedback. This means doing things like running pages through screen readers to ensure the reading order and descriptions make sense. It also involves attempting to navigate courses solely via keyboard and adjusting focus placement if certain elements remain unreachable.
Set aside time and budget for assistive tech testing and work directly with disabled users whenever possible. First understand the accommodations made available to learners within the organization, then reach out to accessibility groups for additional virtual user testing resources.
Provide Flexible Content Options
The more choice and control you give learners over how they access content, the better. Some best practices include:
• Allowing text transcripts alongside audio-only clips
• Enabling adjustable play speeds for video
• Providing visual descriptor captions for images and charts
• Giving frequent options to pause, rewind, or replay media
• Allowing text size changes without breaking page layouts
Conveying the same information across multiple modalities ensures people can engage with the format best suited to their needs.
Focus on Clear Design Principles
Some basic design choices help streamline accessible eLearning for all users:
• Use sans serif fonts and high contrast colors
• Avoid text overlaid on images or busy backgrounds
• Describe all interactive elements and include visible focus indicators
• Provide easily identifiable navigation options on every page
• Craft content in plain language following web writing best practices
By keeping courses visually clean and content clearly written, you lower comprehension barriers tremendously.
Accessibility is an ongoing commitment requiring diligent consideration across all learning programs. Following these tips will get your eLearning offerings off to an inclusive start. But continuously evaluating new technologies, enhancing existing materials, and embracing user feedback helps raise the accessibility bar even higher. This allows more disabled professionals access eLearning they need to progress in their careers.
Tomuz Academy
Comments