Note: This course will be offered in an online version in fall of 2010. Contact Howard Kramer at hkramer@colorado.edu or 303-492-8672 for more information or directions on how to register.

Course Title: Universal Design for Digital Media: Where Usability & Accessibility Meet (listed as Univ. Media Design, ATLS 3519-010/011)

Schedule: Mon, Weds, 11:00 – 11:50 a.m., Fri Lab: 11:00 – 12:50 p.m. (Spring 2010 Semester)

Course Description: Many web and media designers believe that the design process begins and ends with information architecture and visual design. Though these elements are important, other factors are equally if not more crucial for the design of successful web sites and other digital

media. This course will examine the standards and methods for designing digital material which is not only accessible for persons with disabilities – a particularly important requirement for the web sites of public entities – but also effective and usable for all users.

This course will review standards for both usability and accessibility, using resources and texts from media design experts such as Jakob Nielson, Donald A. Norman and Alan Cooper and accessibility experts such as Wendy Chisholm, John Slatin and Jim Thatcher. Demonstrations of persons with disabilities using the Web, some live, some conducted through video or web conferencing, will be conducted in order to provide students with specific and real examples of alternate access methods and how the design of media affects access and usability for different populations. Teleconference guest lectures, pending availability, will also be provided by experts in the field of accessibility such as T.V Raman (Google Research Scientist) and Wendy Chisholm, former Web Access Initiative project manager and author of Universal Design for Web Applications (2009).

Course Objectives/Methods: Through labs, lectures and demonstration, students will learn media design methods, along with the implementation of guidelines and tools to test the usability and accessibility of web pages and other electronic media. A class project will be assigned to plan and construct an accessible web site. A team teaching approach will be used to draw on the expertise of individuals from Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Web Design and Disabilities. (See below for more information on team members).

3 Track theme throughout course: Technology; Design & Testing; & Current Topics (e.g. Legislation, Case studies)

Teaching Team: Howard Kramer, Access Specialist, Disability Services; Dr. Mike Lightner, Professor & Chair, ECE-Eng-Elecl/Comp Admin; Dr. Clayton H. Lewis, Professor, Computer Science; Vijay Patel, IT Professional III, Housing.

Main Contact: Howard Kramer, Disability Services, 492-8672, hkramer@colorado.eduUniversal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design – Ron Mace, Architect.

Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods.

Semantic Web is a term coined by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) director Tim Berners-Lee [1] . It describes methods and technologies to allow machines to understand the meaning - or "semantics" - of information on the World Wide Web [2] .

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts.[citation needed] This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design).

Metadata - Data about data on the Web, including but not limited to authorship, classification, endorsement, policy, distribution terms, IPR, and so on. A significant use for the Semantic Web.

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