Accessibility and the Online Synchronous Learning Space
Goals
- Review the challenges presented by SLMS.
- Discuss strategies for accessibility of SLMS.
- Review UNC System evaluation.
- Discuss the issue and get feedback.
SLMS?
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Synchronous Learning Management System.
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Integrated applications that combine facilities for presentation, collaboration and communication.
- Ease-of-use and affordability for distance learning. Cool stuff!
What Does an SLMS Do?
- Communication, presentation
- Collaboration, file sharing, response tools
- Session capture
Challenges: Workspace
- User interface
- Navigation
Challenges: Communication
Challenges: Collaboration
- Remote desktop
- Application and Web sharing
- Co-browsing
- Whiteboards
Strategies: General
- Moderated or limited use of chat and other interactive collaboration tools.
- Allow time for input from people using assistive technologies.
- Post-class publication of recorded sessions with attached descriptions, transcription and chat logs.
Strategies: Learning Disabilities
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Limit the use to chat tools for pushing transcripts, text descriptions or content other then the chat thread.
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Chat room threads can be very confusing for people with processing deficits without adding other content.
Strategies: Hearing Impairment
- Provide alternate access to audio content. At this time, real-time captioning of all verbal communication and audio content is the only viable option.
- The intermittent quality of live video feeds from within the application precludes the use of real-time sign language interpretation. This is an area evolving rapidly.
Strategies: Visual Impairment
- Use co-browsing combined with accessible content.
- Pre-class distribution of a classroom and whiteboard presentations in an accessible format is essential.
Strategies: Visual Impairment, cont'd
- Provide links to Web content to be used during Web-sharing.
- Provide real-time access to applications and data files used during application sharing.
- Provide post-class or real-time textual/audio description of all session based visual activities (Whiteboard drawings, annotations and application interactions).
What's on the Horizon?
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Remote signing for live presentations via streaming video.
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Digitized pens, annotation tools and handwriting recognition technology to capture and convert graphic text into electronic text.
More Cool Stuff!
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Audio output of SVG based whiteboard and drawing surfaces.
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Remote access to computer systems for application sharing.
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Co-browsing for delivery of presentation, documents and web-application sharing.
The UNC System Evaluation
Accessibility Component
We developed a set of questions that would highlight accessibility concerns, strengths, and overall philosophy. User control of the interface was something we looked at throughout the evaluation, with a sharp eye for input device specific elements. We developed a long list of features to evaluate.
Features Evaluated
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Login Screen, Workspace
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Whiteboard, Application Sharing
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Support for Closed Captioning
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Support for other accessible tools
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Session capture, File upload/download
Centra Symposium 7.5
- Allows up to four attendees to use the microphone and video at the same time.
- Text chat is undocked from the rest of the interface requiring a student or instructor to manually open it during a session.
- The text chat is also not recorded in a session archive, although the chat log can be downloaded separately.
Elluminate 6.5
- To show a PowerPoint presentation outside of application sharing, a user must convert slides to whiteboard files in Elluminate. This process rendered slides to be of much lower image quality than the original PowerPoint slides. Additionally, pasting text into the whiteboard is cumbersome, because the text will not automatically wrap.
Horizon Wimba Live Classroom 4.2
- Immature feature set and lack of interaction tools.
- Students are not easily able to give visual feedback during a session.
- The whiteboard is not object-oriented, which means that objects cannot be rearranged on the whiteboard after placement.
Macromedia Breeze Meeting 5
- Built on proprietary technology from stem to stern. This is both good and bad...
- Highly customizable interface is a grey area - potentially good for cognitive disabilities while presenting serious problems for visual disabilities.
- Audio quality in evaluation was erratic and of a generally poor quality. Instructors must manually adjust students' permissions enable speaking and editing of pods.