This article is the last in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning. Media files such as video, audio and screencasts can be an interesting and engaging way to learn about things. They provide an alternative to text and allow people to understand things in a different way. However some disabled students have difficulties seeing and/or hearing media files,…
This article is the fifth in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning. Students have different preferences around font size and colours which allow them to most easily read text. Many staff will have experience in printing out handouts on non-white paper to meet some students’ needs. Transferring that experience, they want to know…
This article is the fourth in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning. Sometimes staff have complained about the limitations of formatting text in HTML without the advanced skills that many website designers have. Using the text editor available in Blackboard, you do not have full control over the appearance of the text, though you…
This article is the third in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning. Adding images to text on your Blackboard site or in a document can be a good way to make it more visually appealing and to break up the long pieces of text. It is worth noting that not everyone will be…
This article is the second in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning. Blackboard sites can have a lot of information on them. Good organisation of that information becomes essential when this happens, with a clear folder structure and pattern for where to find that information. In an attempt to help students find information…
This article is the first in a series of six articles about accessibility issues in e-learning. It’s become fairly common for some folks to make web links using the words ‘click here’ or ‘here’ to ensure that users know where to find a link. Unfortunately this is not accessible web design for making links and can cause confusion for students…
This post is a follow up to an earlier posting about Google Apps, in which the poor accessibility of Google Apps was mentioned as an issue. Google recently announced a set of accessibility improvements for Google Apps (and also for Android phones and Chrome browsers), and it is worth checking out what they might mean…