A No-Frills Approach for Accessible Web-Based Learning Material Valeria Mirabella
Tiziana Catarci
Stephen Kimani
DIS, University of Rome La Sapienza DIS, University of Rome La Sapienza DIS, University of Rome La Sapienza Via Salaria 113 Via Salaria 113 Via Salaria 113 00198 Rome Italy 00198 Rome Italy 00198 Rome Italy +39 06 49918548 +39 06 49918548 +39 06 49918548
[email protected]
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
[email protected]
General Terms
Most of the efforts for supporting the preparation and deployment of accessible Web-based learning material propose guidelines that prevalently address technical accessibility issues. However, little or no consideration is given to the didactical experts, and thus their didactical experience, in the learning material development. Moreover, the aforementioned guidelines tend to provide high-level/generic indications on alternative forms of didactical content for equivalent access of the content. Nonetheless, the sole provision of equivalent forms does not guarantee the retention of desirable user interface aspects such as effectiveness and efficiency. While we do acknowledge the role of such guidelines, we do propose that the didactical experts be provided with a non-technical recourse that can enable them to contribute to the development process of accessible Web-based learning content. In particular, this work proposes tapping into the experience of the didactical experts by providing them with an avenue through which they can appropriately choose relevant and alternative didactical content toward developing and deploying accessible Web-based learning material.
Design, Human Factors
Keywords Accessibility, Web-based learning, e-learning, didactical expert, alternative content, no-frills, XML
1. INTRODUCTION Many design companies and organizations have often viewed accessibility as an issue related to government agencies and the agencies' suppliers. However, supporting accessibility is mandatory for many organizations. For instance, on June 25th 2001 the US Federal Government put into effect Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act which mandates that IT products/tools purchased or developed by federal agencies must provide equal accessibility to people with special needs. Some establishments adopt accessibility for various other reasons such as: it has the potential to create a market opportunity, it tends to be ultimately beneficial to all users, and it involves innovative technology. Interesting and inspiring as such reasons may be, it is important to ensure that the motivation for supporting accessibility is that it is the right thing i.e. commitment to the provision of equal opportunities for accessing resources for people with special needs; the meeting of user needs. It has been previously observed, "As long as companies and government agencies view accessibility as solely a matter of complying with regulations and technical specifications, rather than a way to support the work practices and customer needs of people with disabilities, equal opportunity will remain a travesty." [10]. Supporting accessibility is a step of commitment in enabling equal access to resources for users with special needs.
Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.2 [Software Engineering]: Design Tools and Techniques – user interfaces.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. W4A at WWW2004, May 18, 2004, New York, New York, USA. Copyright 2004 ACM 1581139039/04/0005. . . $5.00.
There exist various efforts for supporting the preparation and delivery of accessible Web-based learning content (e.g., [4], [2], etc). Most efforts for
19
supporting the preparation and delivery of accessible Web-based learning material, such as the foregoing, propose guidelines that prevalently address technical accessibility issues, such as the format of learning materials. While such an approach does address technical issues in the learning content deployment, little or no consideration is given to the didactical creators in the learning material preparation. The existing guidelines also usually provide highlevel/generic indications on alternative forms of didactical content to enable equivalent access of the content. However, the sole provision of equivalent forms does not guarantee the retention of desirable aspects such as effectiveness and efficiency. For instance, an alternative form may be of low quality leading to discrepancies in the overall quality of the learning material, and therefore may have a serious impact on learning effectiveness. While we do acknowledge the role of the existing guidelines, we do propose that the didactical domain creators be provided with a non-technical recourse that can enable them to contribute to or participate in the development process of accessible Web-based learning content aiming at guaranteeing an effective learning experience. Different experts (e.g. technical experts and domain experts) may be better positioned to handle aspects pertaining to their different areas of expertise.
and alternative didactical content thereby developing and deploying accessible Web-based learning material. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses various efforts on accessibility in the field of Web-based learning. Section 3 describes our proposal of a no-frills approach for enabling didactical experts to contribute to the development of accessible Web-based learning material. Section 4 presents our research directions and also concludes the paper.
2. RELATED EFFORTS ON ACCESSIBLE LEARNING Standardization of learning materials is crucial to the reusability and interoperability. However, ‘the phrase "learning standards" is one of the most powerful and most misunderstood aspects of the e-Learning revolution’1. Standards for things such as content metadata, content packaging, content sequencing, and learner profiles are a prerequisite to the success of the interoperability, the reusability, the manageability and the durability of the digital learning. At present, a number of organizations are working on the standardization of Web-based learning. For instance: the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)2, the IMS Global Learning Consortium (Instructional Management System)3, and the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative with the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)4
In particular, we propose the provision of a relevant avenue that can tap into the wealth of experience of the didactical experts by enabling them to participate in the choosing of the relevant and alternative didactical content toward developing and deploying accessible Web-based learning resources.
IMS Global Learning Consortium does present a study on accessibility in Web-based learning environment. The consortium offers both the ‘best’ practices and general principles. In particular, [4] presents the ‘best’ practices for producing accessible software applications and accessible content for online distributed learning. The document offers six principles that address accessibility issues for people who have sensory or mobility impairments:
It has been said: “Simplicity is power. The power to do less of what doesn't matter and more of what does.” [7]. While the quote was intended for the business community, it does apply to many areas. It especially speaks volumes to the Web arena. No wonder Jennifer states that: “In a medium already famous for 'information overload,' simplicity is a rare and wonderful find." [3]. We propose a no-frills approach that aims to realize accessible e-learning material by removing irrelevant contents (“what doesn’t matter”). As for the relevant content (“what does [matter]”), the approach provides recourse for choosing the appropriate alternative form for the relevant content. The main goal of the proposed approach is to provide an avenue for guiding didactical experts in making the most of their didactical experience when choosing the necessary
•
20
allow for customization based on user preference
1
The MASIE Center, 2002 URL http://www.masie.com
2
http://ltsc.ieee.org/
3
http://www.imsproject.org/
4
http://www.adlnet.org/
•
provide equivalent access to auditory and visual content based on user preference
•
provide compatibility with assistive technologies and include complete keyboard access
•
provide context information
•
follow IMS specifications and other relevant specifications, standards, and/or guidelines
•
consider the use of XML
and
3. A NO-FRILLS APPROACH The no-frills approach aims at realizing accessible elearning material by removing irrelevant contents and choosing the appropriate alternative form for the relevant content. In particular, the no-frills approach intends to provide an avenue for guiding didactical experts in making the most of their didactical experience when choosing the necessary and alternative didactical content thereby developing and deploying accessible Web-based learning material.
orientation
In our approach, we first categorize the types of disabilities/impairments for the potential learners. We also characterize the types of content that are critical when it comes to making the learning material accessible. Such an undertaking would be resourceful especially to the didactical experts who are usually not well acquainted with the issues/problems of accessibility.
The document also offers guidelines for: developing accessible communication and collaboration tools; developing accessible interfaces and interactive environments; the accessibility of specific topics like mathematics and sciences. In the Learner Information Packaging (LIP) specification [5], IMS proposes indications for aspects such as on the accessibility for information model, and the XML schema binding.
We then associate the realized categories of disabilities with the various types of critical content. At the point where a particular disability intersects with a particular critical content, we analyze/consider accessibility barriers and opportunities. In the process, we are poised to develop guidelines/indications that could be resourceful especially to the didactical creator of the learning material.
Another study on accessibility in Web-based learning is presented by the Learning Federation5. The Learning Federation is an initiative designed to create online curriculum content and infrastructure. The Learning Federation proposes the accessibility specifications for guiding the creation, delivery, and usage of accessible learning content. The proposed principles include: •
Legislative compliance
•
Appropriate learning object design
•
Authoring tool design and operation that supports accessibility of content
•
Access device independence
•
Customization based on user preferences
•
Provision for accessibility rating of content
•
Such guidelines can guide the didactical expert in specifying alternative content that is characterized by usefulness, appropriateness and effectiveness.
Provision for specification of a level of telecommunications and hardware/software compliance
Usefulness is closely related to the concept of necessity of the content; the objective is for one to eliminate the contents not necessary in order to increase the usability of the didactic modules by introducing alternative content types/formats.
Appropriateness is related to the selection of the right contents while taking into consideration the type of disability.
Efficiency is related to the real effectiveness of the didactical content.
As an example, a subset of the didactical indications for the translation of a visual line graph to the textual equivalent form could comprise the following:
A set of measurements and requirements to achieve the compliance with the guidelines are also provided.
5
http://www.thelearningfederation.org/
21
Describe what the line graph is created for (i.e. the didactical goal of the graph).
Describe the meaning and the range of the axes.
If the graph is a well-known geometrical figure, indicate the name and the position in relation with the axes.
didactical expert (i.e. add alternative content for visual content like graphs). In the external layer there is the Descriptive metadata (LOM-like) that facilitates the exchange of LOs in a sharable environment. This type of metadata provides the basic information about the LOs i.e. the title, the language, the keywords etc.
Our effort toward developing non-technical indications and guidelines that the didactical expert may use when developing alternative content can be seen in [9]. In this section, we first introduce a conceptual model for representing learning objects (LOs). It is worth pointing out that a learning object (LO) is defined as “any entity -digital or non-digital- that may be used for learning, education or training” [6]. After introducing the LO conceptual model, we propose critical content types that affect the accessibility of learning. We then describe our approach for supporting the content creator in the development and deployment of the Web-based learning material. We wrap up the section by describing the implementation technologies that we are using and also by presenting some running example based on our approach.
3.1 The Conceptual Model
Figure 1: LOs Conceptual Model
The proposed LO conceptual model, which is shown in Figure 1, aims at separating the structure of the LO from the content. We assume that every didactical content has a principal representation (i.e. the visual representation for a graph) and one or more alternative representations (i.e. the textual or audio translation for the same graph).
3.2 Critical Learning Resource Type Critical learning resource types are typical didactical content of e-learning module that can affect accessibility. For example graphs or images are critical didactical content for people who are blind because it is not accessible as it is. Several lists of didactical content are indicated by some of the most notable organizations involved in e-learning standardization and specifications.
The LOs Core is the closest part to the user and is composed by the didactical content and its main representation. From the accessibility perspective the separation of the didactical content and its representation underline the separation between the didactical expert efforts (i.e. choose the appropriate representation or use clear language) and the technical effort (i.e. use Scalable Vector Graphics in place of Raster to store images).
The IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) [6] is one of the most comprehensive scheme developed for the description of learning objects. In the Educational section of LOM, there is a list of Learning Resource Type that includes: exercise, simulation, questionnaire, diagram, figure, graph, index, slide, table, narrative text, exam, experiment, problem statement, self assessment, and lecture.
The LOs Accessibility Metadata represents the additional information for addressing accessibility. The technical metadata are related with the user interface and are primarily focused on navigation issues. The task of providing these types of metadata is typically devoted to the technical expert or corresponding tools for LOs delivery. The didactical content metadata are the alternative forms for the critical didactical content. The provision of these types of metadata is the responsibility of the
We have partially adopted this list in agreement with the opinion that “LOM allows this (the Learning Resource Types) element to be understood as designating types or formats of content as well as potential uses of this content. Also, the values recommended by the LOM exclude many important types of content, and also exclude many educational
22
barriers and also for exploiting any accessibility opportunities.
applications of content” [1]. In our proposal we start with an investigation of only the elements from the LOM list that are both critical from an accessibility perspective and that are format independent.
Toward that, the initial stages of the methodology entail categorizing the potential learners, in terms of disabilities/impairments, for the specific didactical module. The next step involves identifying the content types that the didactical module is made of.
We consider the following elements from the LOM proposal to be format dependent: exercise, simulation, questionnaire, exam, experiment, problem statement, and self-assessment. Moreover, we consider a slide to be non-digital content with respect to the LOM definition. So far, our approach translates visual content to text and therefore here we do not list text as part of critical content.
For every type of content, the methodology analyzes its impact on each of the categories of the learners in terms of physical accessibility (the learner can efficiently access the content) and logical accessibility (the learner can effectively access the content). In the first case, the focus is on access in the rigid sense whereas in the second case, the focus is on access in relation to the didactical efficiency.
Consequently, we have six types of typical didactical content from the LOM model: diagram, figure, graph, index, table and lecture. We also consider another set of critical learning resource type partially from the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)6. The CPB/WGBH NCAM is a facility dedicated to the issues of media and information technology for people with disabilities. In [8] the CPB/WGBH presents eight guidelines in relation with the same number of learning content’s type: images, multimedia, forms, tables, text-books, interactivity, graphs and math.
As an example, consider that the pertinent content is a table of many dimensions. Although we could code the table in order to probably render it rigidly accessible (e.g. with a screen reader), the multiple dimensions of the table might not render it logically accessible in that it would not be possible to sequentially and exhaustively access the information. This would negatively impact the efficiency as far as the learner’s experience with the underlying elearning tool/system is concerned.
From the CPB/WGBH NCAM we will investigate: multimedia, scientific and mathematics expressions. We do not consider forms because they seem to have accessibility issues related more with the format than with the semantic meaning; We also assume consider textbooks to be in textual form. We do not consider interactivity because it is not a content.
The third step involves exploiting opportunities for inserting alternative content that corresponds to the critical content under consideration for some category of learners. In particular, we consider that the didactical content may be considered as: optional, in which case the content is not essential to the realization of the module’s objective; mandatory, in which case the content is essential or relevant to the realization of the module’s objective. In the mandatory case, the didactical expert may also specify whether the level of accessibility is acceptable toward realizing the module’s objective. If the accessibility level is not considered acceptable for accomplishing the objective, the didactical expert may decide whether to translate/describe the content or substitute with some other relevant alternative content and that can contribute to the realization of the objective. Figure 2 shows the overall methodology. Figure 3 expounds one of the steps from the overall methodology; in particular, the analysis of each of the learning content type i.e. “Analyze each content for each user group”.
3.3 Developing Accessible Web-Based Learning Content In the proposed methodology, the presentation of the content is done inline with the W3C guidelines for Web accessibility [11], [12]. The methodology also derives a lot from the common strategies for the creation of didactical modules and the cited methodologies for accessibility in Web-based learning. The basic idea behind the methodology is to provide the didactical creator of the learning material with some simple useful guidelines on possible specific accessibility barriers and opportunities in the content. The methodology also provides the didactical expert with a flexible tool for appropriately removing such 6
http://ncam.wgbh.org/
23
Figure 2: The Overall Methodology
Figure 3: The Analysis of Each Content Type
3.4 Implementation and Demonstration As it was observed in Section 3.3, the proposed methodology does provide the didactical expert with a tool for appropriately removing specific accessibility barriers and also for exploiting any accessibility opportunities. The didactical expert practically begins the task with a Web document (primarily a HTML, a XHTML file or preferably a XML file). Non-XML web documents are rendered to be XML-compatible (e.g., using tools such as JEDI7 and Majix8). From such a single Web document, which we refer to as the initial document, the didactical expert can use the tool to generate various resultant documents/presentations, where each of them is
24
7
http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/oasys/projects/jedi/
8
http://www.tetrasix.com
relevant to a specific accessibility requirements.
scenario
or
Consider that the didactical expert considers the image as content that is "irrelevant" to the visual impaired learner and therefore codes it as "optional" content for the new Web document. Note also that in the initial document, the text that appears below the image (This is a black pen on a table ... ["frills!"]) does not seem to offer much and may therefore be regarded as “irrelevant” even in the initial document. When it comes to the visually impaired learner, that text may be too small to be legible. Therefore the didactical expert codes the original text as “irrelevant” ("optional" content). In order to realize content that is accessible and relevant to the visually impaired learner, the didactical expert introduces (and codes) an audio presentation and text based on the aforementioned critical content didactical guidelines for specifying alternative equivalent content. In fact the introduced text is more enlarged since the target user is visually impaired. The resultant XML code based on the foregoing didactical decisions/indications can be seen in Figure 5.
particular
For each such scenario, choosing alternative content for accessible presentation entails scanning for the content between the XML tags ... in the Web document and then updating the content. In reality, this is a coding process that involves specifying whether the content is relevant or not (i.e., specifying/inserting some mandatory or optional XML tags) and by specifying/ensuring that the level of accessibility is acceptable (e.g., by inserting appropriate XML tags to translate or to substitute the current content) based on the aforementioned simple guidelines or requirements. An XSL stylesheet is used to specify how the new XML document will be interpreted or filtered. In particular, the stylesheet interprets the accessibility coding that the didactical expert introduces in the Web document and generates the accessible presentation as output. As a running example, we consider a scenario whereby the didactical expert would like to present a Web document to a visually impaired learner. The initial document under consideration, and which is in XML format, is shown in Figure 4. The didactical expert’s challenge is to realize an equivalent Web document whose content is accessible and relevant to the visually impaired learner.
Figure 5: XML Code After running the XML code through a stylesheet filter, we get the output shown in Figure 6. It should be observed that "irrelevant" content (i.e. ...) has been "removed" i.e. bypassed. Moreover, the relevant image content is now represented by using the alternative content (i.e. presentation using an audio file and more enlarged text as found) in
Figure 4: Initial Document
25
... (The audio file is embedded as an object in the tag in Figure 5).
directly deal with the technical coding details. Consequently, we are designing a visual environment to support an abstracted coding process. We are considering defining an XML mediation interface in our framework in order to facilitate the import/export of architectural components. Toward that, we would need to develop a definition for the type of components/documents involved. The definition can be specified using XML Schema or DTD. Any type of Web component/document can then be understood by or accommodated into our framework so long as the Web component/document is compliant with our XML Schema or DTD. On the hand, our tool could be plugged into any other framework so long as the framework can support the XML Schema or DTD. We envision the realization of a Web-based learning environment that gives the learner a rewarding elearning experience. We are therefore exploring how we can employ various usability methods during the entire material development process. In this paper we have proposed and described a guideline-based approach through which a didactical expert can steer the specification of alternative content for creating accessible Web-based learning material. The methodology is based on an appropriate filtration of content type via XML technologies.
Figure 6: Resultant Output
4. FUTURE WORK AND CONCLUSIONS We are still working on indications, opportunities and issues arising from the intersection between the types of critical content and the types of disabilities/impairments. In fact, we also intend to consider investigating other multiple dimensions. For instance and in practice there are many users who exhibit more than one type of impairment e.g., a senior citizen could have both visual and aural impairments. In this example we could explore some indications, opportunities and issues arising from the intersection of the visual-aural impairment combination and the types of critical content.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is supported by the VICE 'Comunità virtuali per la formazione' subproject of the CNR/MIUR project.
6. REFERENCES [1] CanCore Guidelines Version 1.9: Educational
Category. http://www.cancore.ca/guidelines/1.9/CanCore_g uidelines_Educational_1.9.pdf. [2] CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible
In the current version of our prototype, the didactical expert relies heavily on the technical/instructional designer in the creation/design of the accessible Webbased learning material. In particular, the didactical expert needs help in the removal or appending of XML tags while preserving the syntax of the code. While we advocate that the technical expert should still be involved in the Web-based learning material development process, there are aspects that can be made much more simpler for the didactical expert. We intend to abstract the didactical expert from having to
Media (NCAM).http://ncam.wgbh.org/cdrom/guideline/. [3] Flemming, J.
Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience. O'Reilly, 1998.
[4] IMS
Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications, Version 1.0, White Paper, 2002. http://www.imsproject.org/accessibility/.
[5] IMS Learner Information Package Accessibility
for LIP Information Model. Version 1.0 Public Draft.
26
in Proceedings of APCHI 2004 (New Zealand, June-July 2004), to appear.
http://www.imsproject.org/accessibility/acclipv1p 0pd/imsacclip_infov1p0pd.html. [6] IEEE
LTSC Learning Object LOM_1484_12_1_v1_Final_Draft. http://ltsc.ieee.org/wg12/files/.
Meta-data
[10] Nielsen, J. Beyond Accessibility: Treating Users
[7] Jensen, B. Simplicity: The New Competitive
with Disabilities as People, Alertbox, November 11 2001, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20011111.html. [11] Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, W3C
Advantage in a World of More, Better, Faster. Perseus Publishing, 2001.
Recommendations. http://www.w3.org/TR/WAIWEBCONTENT/.
[8] Making Educational Software and Web Sites
[12] Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Working Draft 29 April 2003, W3C Recommendations, http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#overviewdesign-principles.
Accessible Design Guidelines Including Math and Science Solutions. http://ncam.wgbh.org/cdrom/guideline. [9] Mirabella, V., Kimani, S., and Catarci, T.
Recourse for Guiding Didactical Creators in the Development of Accessible e-Learning Material
27
28
