eAccessibility as a transferable skill in production teams Gerald Schmidt
The top down approach to accessibility • Many educational service providers have chosen to make accessibility a key component of their mission • What is more, there is no lack of passion driving them to meet these goals • What is missing? One line of inquiry takes us higher up still to the legislative framework in which service providers operate • Take the following three excerpts from consecutive pieces of legislation 2 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
DDA 1995 Disability Discrimination Act Duty of providers of services to make adjustments Where a provider of services has a practice, policy or procedure which makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for disabled persons to make use of a service which he provides, or is prepared to provide, to other members of the public, it is his duty to take such steps as it is reasonable, in all the circumstances of the case, for him to have to take in order to change that practice, policy or procedure so that it no longer has that effect. Link 3 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
SENDA 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act Each responsible body must take such steps as it is reasonable for it to have to take to ensure that […] disabled persons are not placed at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with persons who are not disabled Link 4 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
Equality Act 2010 Duty to make adjustments The first requirement is a requirement, where a provision, criterion or practice of A's puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter in comparison with persons who are not disabled, to take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid the disadvantage. Link 5 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
The legislative context in education • In the UK, legal guidance is far from clear and decisive, making the word ‘reasonable’ carry a huge amount of weight • This lack of clarity creates a drag factor at all levels of an organization • The emphasis on ‘making adjustments’ to an existing service places accessibility in competition with other top level priorities (e.g. embracing mobile) in unhelpful ways 6 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
Never mind ‘reasonable’, ‘adjustment’ doesn’t work • We need to create services differently, not fix what we have created • This creates an opportunity for transformation from the bottom up • It also shines a spotlight on eAccessibility skills 7 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
I’m feeling lucky • Thanks to many years of concerted effort by the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative and others, accessibility is inextricably bound up with the technologies underpinning the web • By colossal good fortune, the mobile web and app-centric mobile operating systems have only served to strengthen the link with accessibility • It is possible to create inaccessible websites and apps, but building in accessibility need not be more expensive or time- consuming • Instead, it is primarily a question of skill 8 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
Tools as windows on a common set of technologies • The further we immerse ourselves in web technologies and related standards, the less we have to say about how a tool works • Anybody joining an organization should feel that they can apply what they already know • Anybody leaving it should be confident that what they have learned will be relevant to future roles 9 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
eAccessibility at the feature level • Reflowable text helps us target screen sizes ranging from phones to laptops to televisions • Web typography with a choice of font sizes shines on displays with high pixel densities • Contrast settings double as a convenient night mode • Media overlays offer an elegant solution for synchronized audio and text highlighting • Figure descriptions support audiobook creation for commuters and headphone learning • ‘Web in a box’ approach is well suited to offline delivery 10 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
eAccessibility at the technology level • Progressive enhancement disentangles content (HTML) from presentation (CSS) and behaviour (JavaScript) • The Accessible Rich Internet Applications suite (WAI-ARIA) encapsulates the most challenging of the three (behaviour) in such a way that reading systems can target specific users and scenarios • Six years from the launch of iPhone OS, browsers supporting the full range of accessible web technologies form an integral part of all mobile platforms 11 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
Mapping skills to production tasks • The rising importance of open standards and web technologies is immediately apparent in everyday production tasks • In-house software has shrunk to a thin application layer on top of open source tools and open standards such as EPUB • The abundance of free and robust utilities is enabling a much greater degree of automation, allowing production staff to concentrate on tasks requiring and rewarding close engagement. 12 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
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3h training session • EPUB (15m) • XML, HTML and CSS (15m) • web fonts (15m) • accessibility (15m) • group work: preparing Meet Zinzan (30m) • group work: preparing All About Mummies (1h) • questions/answers (30m) 17 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
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Access for everyone, by everyone • Accessible web technologies enable production teams to produce highly accessible learning experiences without spending more time or buying more expensive tools • The mobile web and app-centric platforms have helped rather than hindered this work • Good practice regarding accessibility no longer has to be defined at the process level: teams can go straight to the W3C’s web accessibility guidelines • Accessibility is built in first time; there is no need to go back and make adjustments later • Most eAccessibility skills can and should be transferable 21 eAccessibility as a transferable skill
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