Creating accessible learning experiences: practical tips for facilitators and designers

Accessible learning graphic

A heartfelt ‘thank you’ to Donna Purcell, Sarah Hayes and Lisa Le Van for generously sharing their expertise in human rights and in education for people with disability.

Last month I facilitated a Train the Trainer program with a cohort that included people with vision and hearing impairments.  These individuals are also experts in human rights for people with disability and are keen to share ideas about what we facilitators can do to ensure learning events work for all participants.  They have invited me to share these ideas, and hope you will share them with others in your network.  So please help us spread the word!

Here are their suggestions:

Get started

When in doubt, ask!

The single most effective way to ensure that a learning event works for participants with disability is to ask them what they need to make the event work for them, then find ways to meet these needs.

The client for my Train the Trainer program gave me four weeks’ notice that I would have attendees with vision and hearing impairments.  Of the cohort of 12 participants:

  • two had vision impairments
  • two had hearing impairments.

Having this information ahead of time was essential, as it gave me time to prepare how I would adapt activities and materials.

Don’t assume – ask each time!

Each participant has their own unique combination of experiences and learning preferences.  The same is true of participants with disability.

There is no one-size-fits-all way to address the learning needs of participants with disability.  For example, even though I had participants with vision impairment and two with hearing impairment, on my Train the Trainer program, each individual had their own preferred ways to engage in the learning.

Facilitate accessible learning

Don’t single out participants with disability

Don’t single out participants with disability in front of others.  Instead, find a private way to:

  • ask them what they need from you to make the learning work for them
  • invite them to give you feedback and suggestions at any time throughout the learning event and be prepared to continually adjust activities based on their ongoing progress and feedback.

In a virtual online class, have these conversations using private chat.  In a face-to-face class, find regular moments for unintimidating, private conversations.

Clear the floor – literally and figuratively!

Literally, clear the floor

In face to face training:

  • Ensure the floor space between the entrance to the training room and participant seating is free from any obstacles or clutter. This will benefit everyone, and especially participants with a vision impairment or people using a mobility aid.
  • If you have participants who use wheelchairs, organise desks with no chairs in front of them, so they can easily move the wheelchair into place.  If available, provide an adjustable height table.

Figuratively, clear the floor

Figuratively, the notion of ‘clearing the floor’ simply means removing any unnecessary clutter that may hinder participants with disability from accessing the learning. Some examples of clutter include:

  • onerous enrolment processes
  • hard-to-access learning materials
  • transport to the training venue and accessing the training room (face-to-face training)
  • gaining the tools and digital skills needed to engage in technology-assisted learning.

Make your activities accessible

Here are some simple ways to modify common training activities so they are more accessible:

Accessible brainstorms or design-thinking exercises

Participants with vision impairment may not be able to read or write on whiteboards or post-it notes, as is often required in brainstorms or design-thinking-based activities.  Participants with hearing impairment may struggle to hear and contribute ideas when brainstorming in large groups.

A simple way for all participants to engage in a brainstorm is to have participants work in pairs or groups of three (no larger, if possible).  This way, the participants with disabilities can contribute and use the complementary skills of their partner/s to complete the activity.

Presenting information and managing visual aids

Research tells us that we absorb new information best by combining spoken word with image, rather than by using spoken words with written words.

Use spoken word with images, not with text

However, when you have participants with vision or hearing impairments, these rules change.

Participants with vision impairment

  • Describe all visual aids or cues used—images on a slide, what you are drawing on a whiteboard, or what you are demonstrating.
  • If you distributed a Word version of a workbook for sight-impaired participants ahead of time, reference where you are at in the workbook by title, rather than by page number.

Participants with hearing impairment

If the participants with hearing impairment use lip-reading as a tool, speak clearly, facing them.  In face-to-face training, ensure participants with hearing impairments are seated in the centre of the room.  This way you don’t draw undue attention to them when you turn to face them when speaking.

If the participants with hearing impairment do not use lip-reading as a tool, you may need to add more detail to your slides than you normally would.  Alternatively, you could:

  • develop a customised version of the slides for participants with hearing impairment – add detail to these slides that matches the information you will share verbally – give this to participants with hearing impairment ahead of time and encourage them to refer to these detailed slides while you project the less detailed slides to the rest of the class
  • (in virtual classrooms, webinar rooms or pre-recorded sessions) enable closed captions and record transcripts – see the blog post, Five easy steps to more universal design for a simple example of how to do this.

Small adjustments you make to your learning activities can make a big difference to participants with disability.

Training materials & products

A great starting point

Have a look at Five easy steps to more universal design.  This post has some useful starting points for designing accessible materials and explains the function of screen readers, which visually-impaired participants often rely on to read and interpret learning materials.

Here are some more tips:

Increase accessibility of workbooks

When preparing for my Train the Trainer program, I used MS Word to modify the workbook for the participants with vision impairment. Here’s what I did, on advice from them:

Remove graphics or help screen readers understand them

Here are some options to make graphics work better for participants with vision impairment:

  • Remove the graphic and replace it with text that explains the information conveyed by the graphic (easiest to read)
  • Or, if you must keep the graphic, make it easier for a screen reader to interpret – two ways to do this are: 1) add Alt Text or use the Alt Text function to mark the graphic as ‘decorative’; 2) give the graphic a file name that summarises its content.

Replace tables with text

In MS Word or equivalent, we use tables to make content easier to read and to appear nicely on a page.  But screen readers don’t read tables easily!  So, to make your materials more accessible, convert any tables in your standard learning resource to text.  If you must use a table, don’t merge cells.

Use document styles

Screen readers recognise document styles—Heading 1 for major section headings, Heading 2 for sub-headings, and so on.  Use styles consistently throughout your document. This will make it easier for screen readers to do their job.

Distribute a Word version of your workbook

If possible, set up your workbook ahead of time and send it to the participant/s with vision impairment so they can read it ahead of time and bring it to class.  Word is preferable to pdf or hard copy because:

  • most sight readers can more easily read Word documents than pdf documents. Although some screen readers can read pdf content, Word is easier.
  • participants can add personal notes if using a Word version of a participant workbook.

Use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

WCAG is a set of internationally-used guidelines to help developers develop accessible online content.  If you develop resources, use these guidelines to help you create more universally-designed resources.

In summary

If you remember nothing else, remember our first tip: when in doubt, ask!  Participants with disability are the most authoritative experts on their own needs. If you ask, they will tell you what they need, and we’ll all have an insightful learning experience as a result!

Five easy steps to more universal design

Image of multiple hands coming together - suggests universality and accessibility

Learning should lead to performance…

We, educators, hope that people will learn something from us, remember what they learned, and ultimately use what they learned to improve or extend their performance—at work, in their personal lives, or both.

Lately, I’ve had the good fortune to apply the Learn→Remember→Use concept to myself.   I have recently met, heard, trained and collaborated with various people who know a lot about universal design.

In this post, I present the five most useful tips I learned, remembered, and now use, to make my learning materials more universally accessible.

 

First things first… what is ‘universal design’?

The concept of universal design applies to anything we design.  This includes furniture, machines, workspaces, learning materials, and more.

To me, universal design means designing anything so anyone can access and use it.  This is a simplistic definition.  To learn more, have a look at the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design (CEUD).  CEUD offers:

 

My top five quick and easy tips to apply principles of universal design to learning materials

 

Tip 1. Download the DAT

Vision Australia has produced a Document Accessibility Toolbar (a DAT) that we can download and add to our Microsoft Word toolbars.  The DAT consolidates all the tools in MS Word that promote accessibility.  This means I can access everything Word offers to help me make more accessible documents, from one place.

Here’s what the DAT looks like, once installed:

Image showing how the Document Accessibility Toolbar appears beside other toolbars in MS Word, when installed.

CLICK HERE to download the Document Accessibility Toolbar from Vision Australia

I’ve started using the DAT to easily access functions such as Alt Text (see Tip 2 below).

 

Tip 2. Add Alt Text to images

What is Alt Text?

Alt Text is short for Alternative Text.  It is text that we embed behind an image, to explain what the image is. For example:

Cricket Ball
Alt Text for this image reads, Cricket Ball
Why use Alt Text?

Alt Text helps people with a sight impairment make sense of images used in our learning materials.  Images may include photographs, infographics, company logos, decorative banners, charts or icons, to name a few.

People with a sight impairment often rely on a screen reader to make sense of learning materials.  When a screen reader gets to an image, it will read the Alt Text embedded behind the image.  Therefore, well-written Alt Text will help people understand the information or concept that the image conveys.

We can also use Alt Text to identify images that are decorative and do not add meaning to the text.  For example, the discussion icon below doesn’t add meaning, so should be marked as decorative:

Screen readers will pass over images marked as decorative, rather than trying to interpret them.

How to add Alt Text to an image

In MS Word:

When writing online publications such as this blog post, simply select the image then use the edit tool to add Alt Text.

To save time, add Alt Text to the master versions of images that you use often—for example, your logo or a discussion icon.  Then, copy and paste the master image throughout your document.  This way, you only enter Alt Text for a popular image, once.

 

Tip 3. Capitalise the first letter of words in hashtags

In May this year, I attended the Association for Talent Development’s International Conference and Expo for 2019 (#ATD2019) in Washington DC.

I attended a session by Maureen Orey called, No learner left behind: designing inclusive learning programs and materials.

I picked up many ideas from her session, but my number one takeaway stood out because it was SO simple—capitalise the first letter of each word in a hashtag.

So instead of writing #greatideasforhashtags, we should write #GreatIdeasForHashtags

Why this works

If we capitalise the first letter of each word in a hashtag, screen readers will identify each word in the hashtag.  But if all letters are lowercase, the screen reader will try to read all the words in the hashtag as one word… and that won’t end well!

 

Tip 4. Use a contrast checker

High contrast between text and background colour in a document makes any learning resource easier to read.  For example, against this white background:

  • this text colour has a higher colour contrast, and is easier to read, than
  • this text colour.
Use a contrast checker to make sure text is universally readable

I’ve recently learned about this contrast checker.  It checks the font colour, size, and background colour of any text within a document and will tell you how easily (or not) people with a sight impairment or colour-blindness can read it.  I have found this very useful and have already started changing the colours and font sizes to make sure anyone can read materials that I write.

 

Tip 5. Add captions to videos

We know that captioning helps people understand video content, but I am a one-person operation with limited time and budget, so had always placed captioning in the ‘too hard’ basket.

Things have changed.

In June, I attended the Australian Institute for Training and Development (AITD)’s 2019 Workplace Learning Conference (#AWLC2019).  One session that resonated with me was delivered by the Learning Uncut team of Michelle Ockers,  Karen Moloney and Amanda Ashby.  The Learning Uncut website offers recordings of conversations with leaders in the learning, development and performance field.  Michelle, Karen and Amanda have ‘day jobs’ and created Learning Uncut just because they wanted to.  So at #AWLC2019, they shared how they produce their recordings—with transcripts—on a budget.

The Learning Uncut team made me think, if they can do it, perhaps I can, too.  So, I investigated how to add captions to videos.  My research took me to a video recording program which let me add captions so easily that even I could do it!

Here’s my first attempt at a video with captions

To create captions in this video, I let the software interpret and transcribe what I said.  I was amazed by how accurate the transcript was.  The only error was the spelling of my name—Chemène.  However, since most people struggle with my name, I forgave the software for getting it wrong.   Once I corrected my name, the captions were good-to-go.  I was surprised by how quick and easy the process was.

 

The free version of the program I used does not allow people to add captions to videos, but the paid version does.  With a cost of just $1 per month, I decided that investment in the paid version was worthwhile!

 

How I’ve used these ideas to create more universal learning materials

  1. I have downloaded the Document Accessibility Toolbar and added it to my version of MS Word
  2. I now add Alt Text to all images in learning materials I develop, and am working through existing materials and adding Alt Text to these
  3. I’m updating my templates to ensure a universally readable contrast between fonts and their backgrounds
  4. I now capitalise the first letter of each word in hashtags (#SoEasyToDo)
  5. I am producing more videos with captions!

These five tips have helped me begin working towards more universal learning materials.  I hope you’ll find them useful, too.  Of course, there remains much to learn—#LifeLongLearning!