20,000 pages and Counting: Improving Accessibility of Files Delivered through 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> Create documents in a way that can be

accessed through visual, auditory and tactile means

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.

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 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 31

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

1,097 2,003 753 1,598

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

20,373 34,492 9,445 26,808

Hold your breathe, we’re diving deeper…

How accessible is it? – Word Docs

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014

Autumn 2014

# word docs 188 298 144 200

% of files distributed that were word docs

17% 15% 19% 16%

% of word docs that had headings

7% 10% 8% 20%

% of word docs that didn’t have headings

93% 90% 92% 80%

How accessible is it? – PDFs text selectability

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014

Autumn 2014

# pdfs 806 1476 528 1,255

% of files distributed that were pdfs

74% 74% 70% 79%

% pdfs that were text selectable that DRS didn't have to convert

78% 77% 27% 69%

% pdfs that text was not selectable OR text was not accurate

22% 23% 73% 31%

How accessible is it? – PDFs structure*

Winter 2014 Spring 2014 Summer 2014

Autumn 2014

# pdfs 806 1476 528 1,255

% pdfs that had either tags or bookmarks

21% 25% 16% 22%

% pdfs that had both tags/bookmarks

8% 5% 5% 7%

% pdfs that had neither tags or bookmarks

71% 70% 79% 71%

*Tags were evaluated only if they existed, not for accuracy

Okay, come up for air

What does this data tell me?

Results summary

> There is a lot of content being distributed through LMSs

> Necessary data mining took time> 18% of documents distributed are word docs

– 90% of those word docs do not have headings

> 70% of documents distributed are PDFs– 23% of those PDFs do not have quality text– 75% of PDFs have no structure

What’s the game plan?

Accommodation perspective (retroactive)

> DS performs accessibility audit of files distributed through LMS

> DS converts files and return to faculty> Provide lab with scanners, software and hardware

to students to convert materials themselves > Have an online 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)

> 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