20,000 pages and Counting: Improving Accessibility of Files Delivered by Learning Management Systems

Krista GreearAccess Text and Technology Managergreeark@uw.edu

What are we discussing today?

Background

> Work at Disability Resources for Students> Provide academic accommodations

– Specifically, convert instructional materials like textbooks

> Create documents in a way that can be accessed through visual, auditory and tactile means– large print– electronic version that can be enlarged– pdf or word document to use with text-to-speech

software– comptuer-generated.mp3 file– braille

Game-changing question

My professor distributes electronic readings

through online course system. Can those be

made accessible?

Maybe you’ve heard of these:

> Canvas> Moodle> Blackboard> Desire2Learn> And so on….

At UW, we predominantly use Canvas and Catalyst, a home-grown system.

Discussion boards and files distribution are most commonly used features of LMS on campus.

Discovered the Star-Nosed Mole!

My questions

>What classes were using LMSs?>What kind of content is distributed

through LMSs?>How much content?>How accessible is it?

Data mining

Process for File Evaluation

1. Asked to be added to courses LMS. Did this via email.

2. Download all files. 3. Use keyboard shortcuts to get file

names into a template Excel spreadsheet.

4. Had student workers evaluate each file. 5. Aggregate data into one spreadsheet. 6. Ask my questions again.

What classes were using LMSs?What kind of content is distributed through LMSs?How much content?

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014

# classes evaluated 28 58 28

# files (pdfs, word docs, powerpoint, excel, text files)

1,097 2,003 753

# pages (pdfs, word docs, powerpoint, excel, text files) distributed through LMS that DRS evaluated

20,373 34,492 9,445

Hold your breathe, we’re diving deeper…

How accessible is it? – Word Docs

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014

# word docs 188(or 17% of all

files)

298 (or 15% of all

files)

144 (or 19% of all

files)# files that had headings 13 (or 7%) 29 (or 10%) 12 (or 8%)

# files that didn’t have headings

175 (or 93%) 269 (or 90%) 132 (or 92%)

How accessible is it? – PDFs text selectability

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014

# pdfs 806(or 74% of all

files)

1476(or 74% of all

files)

528 (or 70% of all

files)# files that were text selectable that DRS didn't have to convert

633 (or 78%) 1132 (or 77%) 139 (or 27%)

# files that text was not selectable OR text was not accurate

174 (or 22%) 344 (or 23%) 388 (or 73%)

How accessible is it? – PDFs structure*

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014 Autumn 2014

# pdfs 806(or 74% of all

files)

1476(or 74% of all

files)

528 (or 70% of all

files)# files that had either tags or bookmarks

162 (or 21%) 373 (or 25%) 84 (or 16%)

# files that had both tags/bookmarks

62 (or 8%) 67 (or 5%) 26 (or 5%)

# files that had neither tags or bookmarks

569 (or 71%) 1030 (or 70%) 418 (or 79%)

*Tags were not evaluated for accuracy merely if they existed

Okay, come up for air

What does this data tell me?

Results summary

> There is a lot of content being distributed through LMSs that has to be purposefully sought out

> Data mining this way is time consuming> 70% of documents distributed are PDFs

– 25% of those PDFs are not text selectable– 75% of PDFs have no structure

> 18% of documents distributed are word docs– 90% of those word docs do not have headings

What’s the game plan?

Accommodation perspective (retroactive)

> Files are created with a specific student or disability in mind– DRS performs accessibility audit of files distributed

through LMS– DRS converts files and return to faculty– Provide software to students to convert materials

themselves (with partnerships on campus)> Scanners, computers and software open to students in ATC

– Have a student-self serve option> SensusAccess: online file conversion system for quick,

temporary solution

> Access perspective (have content creators make creating accessible-born documents)– Files are created with everyone in mind

Access perspective (proactive)

> Files are created with everyone in mind– Provide information about how to create accessible

documents >http://www.washington.edu/accessibility/

– Partner with Center for Teaching and Learning to disseminate information and tools like CAR Check

– Work with specific department or faculty member to evaluate and fix files before distributed to class

> Need more experience about faculty perspective

What do files on your campus look like?

Krista GreearAccess Text and Technology Managergreeark@uw.edu