Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 57 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Yesterday I participated in the W3C’s, Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI) Website Accessibility Metrics Online Symposium. Details and access to the papers and presentations of the symposium is available at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2011/metrics/.

This blog post is not an attempt to give a comprehensive report of the symposium but to air some of my thinking about it and how it relates to ongoing work I am involved in at the Open University where I am employed as a Senior Research Fellow with an internal consultancy role on accessibility.

Personal basis for interest in web metrics

I have been working on technology for people with disabilities since 1991. Since 1998 when I joined the Open University that has been focused at technology which enables teaching and learning. My academic background is in cybernetics and I usually describe myself as a systems engineer. So my main interests are in access to systems and systems behaviours that can be enabling. Most systems today have web-based interfaces so web accessibility is an important issue. In the interdisciplinary teams I have led or been part of, and in the accessibility work of the Institute of Educational Technology for the rest of the university, our evaluation of accessibility has put highest value on user (disabled student) evaluations. These are normally based on observational studies with participants interacting with functioning prototypes followed up by structured interviews. For pragmatic reasons extensive expert evaluations supplement these end-user evaluations (early in development and for procurement assessments they are often the best method). However these expert evaluations are not based on the automated or semi-automated evaluation tools, often associate with the metrics reported in this symposium, that evaluate against the web accessibility standards. Rather they are based on heuristic methods interacting with the prototypes using a range of assistive technologies (ATs) and access techniques to in effect emulate the users with different disabilities. This is to answer two key research questions for a range of different users:

• Can the disabled user undertake the actions intended by the design?
• What will the end-user experience be (compared with a user not deploying AT or access approaches)?

A definition of Web Accessibility Metrics

Web metrics in general quantify a result for assessments of properties of web pages and their use; they might include:

• Web usage and patterns
• User supplied data
• Transactions
• Site performance
• Usability
• Financial analysis (ROI)

Web accessibility metrics try to give an assessment of the level of accessibility against a given standard e.g WCAG 2.0.

What are they for?

Three basic questions about any metric:

• What should you measure?
• How do you measure it?
• What do you do with the data once you have it?

Further Questions:

I will leave a few other questions undiscussed but they are informing my thinking about web accessibility metrics:

• What are web accessibility guidelines for?
• What does a metric try to give a measure of (how do they related to the guidelines)?
• Who are they for, who are the users of the tools that produce the metrics then the consumers of the resulting metrics?
• What are they for (in addition to the points raised above)?

Specific examples of schemes of web metrics

I just list here the specific schemes of web metrics mentioned in the papers of the symposium. I try and give a defining characteristic for some but make no attempt at a comparative study.

• WAB Score [Paper 1] The Web Accessibility Barrier (WAB) score metric was proposed by Parmanto and Zeng (2005). It is a method that enables identification and quantification of accessibility trends across Web 1.0 websites and Web 2.0 websites. The WAB score formula tests 25 WCAG 1.0 criteria that can be evaluated automatically.

• Failure rate [Paper 1], [Paper 6] The failure-rate metric computes the ratio between number of accessibility violations over the number of failure points. – First propose by Sullivan and Matson (in 2000) possibly the start of web accessibility metrics.

• UWEM Score [Paper 1], [Paper 3], [Paper 11]

Part of the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology developed in 3 linked EU projects. Based on WCAG 1.0. Migration strategy to WCAG 2.0 published but not yet executed, see: Paper 11. The UWEM score function for presenting large-scale web accessibility monitoring results. The calculation yields a continuous ratio with a minimum of 0, in case no barriers are found. If all tests fail each time they are applied the score reaches its maximum value 1.

• Barriers Impact Factor, BIF [Paper 2]

BIF reports, for each error detected in evaluating against WCAG 2.0, the list of assistive technologies/disabilities affected by such an error then: The calculation of the ratio yields continuous results with a minimum of 0, if no barriers are found. On the other hand if all tests fail each time they are applied the score reaches its maximum value 1.

BIF(i) = Σ_error #error(i) x weight(i); the total BIF is: tBIF = Σ_i BIF(i) and the average BIF is: aBIF = tBIF/#pages

Where:
· i represents the assistive technologies/disabilities affected by detected errors;
· BIF(i) is the Barrier Impact Factor affected the i assistive technology/disability;
· error(i) represents the number of detected errors which affect the i assistive technology/disability;
· weight(i) represents the weight which has been assigned to the i assistive technology/disability.

• WAQM [Paper 3], [Paper 4], [Paper 6]

• SAMBA [Paper 4] a Semi-Automatic Method for measuring Barriers of Accessibility (SAMBA), it integrates manual and automatic evaluations on the strength of barriers harshness and of tools errors rates.

• BITV-Test [Paper 7]

BITV-Test is a semi-automated web-based accessibility evaluation tool employing a rating approach. It undertakes page-level rating and aggregation of page level ratings in a overall test score. BITV-Test’s 50 checkpoints map to WCAG level AA. Each checkpoint has a weight of 1, 2 or 3 points, depending on criticality.

When testing a page per checkpoint, evaluators assess the total pattern or the set of instances and apply a graded Likert-type scale with five rating levels:

1. pass (100%)
2. marginally acceptable (75%)
3. partly acceptable (50%)
4. marginally unacceptable (25%)
5. fail (0 %)

Ratings reflect both the frequency and criticality of flaws. For ratings other than a full “pass”, a percentage of the weight is recorded. Page level rating values are aggregated over the entire page sample. At a total score of 90 points or more, the site is considered accessible.

The final BITV-Test (they also have self-assessment and design support versions) is a tandem test, in other words, two qualified evaluators test independent of each other and harmonise their results only once they have finished their respective test runs.

• eChecker [Paper 8], not a metric but an automated web page accessibility tool that evaluates according to UWEM and was used in Paper 8 in a comparative study with eXaminator.

• eXaminator [Paper 8]

eXaminator has its roots in manual evaluations made by experts (since 2000). Unlike metrics such as WAQM, which seeks to achieve a failure rate for each page or UWEM, which seeks a failure rate for each checkpoint, eXaminator assigns a score to a specific occurrence in a page. The metric (the authors argue) is faithfully to the definition of WCAG’s compliance and the unit of conformity: the page.

• Logic Scores Preferences (LSP) method [Paper 9],

LSP an aggregation model (based on neural networks) that computes a global score from the intermediate scores. (Dujmovic, 1996). These intermediate scores consist of failure-rates or the absolute number of accessibility problems. (Paper 9 reports using this approach in both Device Tailor and User Tailored metrics)

• eGovMon Project [Paper 11] Paper reported on the issues uncovered by this Norwegian project in trying to update UWEM to a new metric based on WCAG 2.0 (a non-trivial tasks as discussed in the paper)

A critique of Web Accessibility Metrics (Martyn’s views)

How much do they help developers find and fix accessibility deficits? My thinking to date, is that for my context very little. However I am open to be persuaded otherwise from other’s experience (so please add a comment). A possible role for them at systems wide accessibility review in an eLearning context is envisaged in the final section of this blog.

A good thing recognised in almost all Web Accessibility Metrics approaches is that accessibility is not a binary issue. Web sites are not either accessible or not but have degrees of accessibility. In fact they have degrees of accessibility for different users and this is not recognised in any of the approaches known to me (but happy to be corrected). So few if any of the approaches enable statements like, “this site while reasonably accessible to screen-reader users but would be problematic for those with a hearing impairment or who were colour blind”, to be directly and correctly deduced.

None of the web accessibility metrics considered in [Paper 3] directly addresses the developers’ efforts needed to correct the accessibility problems. That paper went on to consider the impact of which accessibility deficits were due to deficits in templates used in the authoring of the sets of web pages under review. However, this raises the more general question from the perspective of the manager or web developer: what does the accessibility metric tell me about what will be the cost (in terms of time and effort) of improving that metric to a given level, for a given set of web resources? I would argue that none of the existing metrics facilitate this, although the data collected in calculating the metric will also be helpful in evaluating the cost or remedial action. Is this a feature facilitated in the automated and semi-automated tools created to calculate web metrics? I.e. do the tools make available the useful data? Estimates of cost of remedial action here are thus mostly facilitated by automated/semi-automated evaluation techniques not the metric. The one thing the metric may give is a scale on which to be able to say: how much will it cost to improve by so much and then by a degree further. However I have never heard managers of web resources frame the question this way. It is usually what is it going to cost to address the deficits to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA (for example)? I am not sure metrics help here.

Where are the users? I find this the most disturbing situation around accessibility metrics (well and around web accessibility standards too). I am yet to encounter any work (and I would be delighted to have it pointed out to me) where attempts have been made to verify if the metrics correlate to the access experience of disabled people. I know that such a study would be difficult and costly to do because it would have to be done at scale and involve a large diversity of users to be meaningful. However until such work is done then we are just in a self-referential circle convincing ourselves we have something of real worth. This follows from the fact that the correlations that have been done are between expert evaluations and the metrics generated by various tools both working to the same standards which, as far as I am aware, have not undergone large-scale assessment against the experience of diverse users of web sites where they have been rigorously applied. [I am not questioning the validity of WCAG 2.0 here - I might elsewhere just asserting the importance of user evaluation in ensuring validity.]

The other users to consider here are the consumers of the metrics. Are the metrics meeting their needs? Are the metrics well understood by those that use them?

The importance of context Context is very important to the evaluation of user experiences. This is a long-established principle in evaluations undertaken by my Institute (established long before I was there). The web accessibility metrics reviewed here, for the most part, remove context. This issue was raised and discussed in the paper by Markel Vigo, of the University of Manchester, entitled “Context-Tailored Web Accessibility Metrics” [Paper 9].

Accessibility as process

BS 8878 provides a framework that allows definition – and measurement – of the process undertaken by organisations to procure an optimally accessible web site, but is at present a copyrighted work and not freely available. In comparison to a purely technical WCAG conformance report, the nature of the data being gathered for measurement means that inevitably the measurement process is longer; but it also provides a richer set of data giving context – and therefore justification – to current levels of accessibility.

[David Sloan, Brian Kelly Paper 10]

This paper, entitled “Web Accessibility Metrics For A Post Digital World“, rather than presenting results of previous work was more a position paper presenting a perspective on possible future directions for metrics that stood out as distinct from the other papers. It was closely aligned to my own views, but that is perhaps not surprising as I am a regular follower of Brian’s blog. (I know David and Brian quite well and respect them both.)

I commend Brian Kelly’s blog, which covers broader issues than accessibility, he has beaten me to getting up a post relating to this metrics workshop): http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/

One theme of the paper is that measuring accessibility should not be restricted to web pages. That it should evaluate to what extent, interpreting to the OU’s context, disabled students can achieve the same learning goals as other students. This may include by alternative learning activities, or by using alternative online resources, or resources in alternative formats. This has been a major theme in my work for the last 10 years in the development of the AccessForAll metadata based approach for managing alternatives and implementations of it in EU4ALL. There has always been a tension, in evaluating for accessibility between those that assume a universal accessibility approach (one size fits all) and those that seek to facilitate flexibility and adaptability via alternatives and personalisation. It is always easier to measure something tightly defined and unchanging but that may not be the best access solution.

On of the strengths of BS8878 is that it has the perspective of embedding accessibility considerations in a company or organisation. (Note the link is to the BSI shop to order a paid copy. UK universities may be able to obtain a copy without further charge if their libraries subscribe to BSI online). BS8878 has a 16 step model of web product development from the pre-start to post-launch of the web product. It is noteworthy that only 4 steps reference WCAG 2.0.

What I understand David Sloan and Brian Kelly to be suggesting is that there could be a role for metrics across such a process. BS8878 provides a framework against which “measurement” could be made. While currently reflecting on how BS8878 might be applied across the university, and meeting this proposal, I am left with the questions:

• What would be the nature of measurements against BS8878′s 16 step model?
• Would there be any value in a metric that somehow aggregated these measurements?

Under “Major Difficulties” the paper raises the following point:

The obvious difficulties in defining and implementing an accessibility metric that incorporates quality of user experience and the quality of the process undertaken to provide that experience are the complexity of the environment to be measured – i.e. not just a collection of resources that enable an experience, but also evidence of organisational activity taken to enhance inclusion.

[David Sloan, Brian Kelly Paper 10]

The link between web standards, web metrics and Learner Analytics within a University.

Some ideas are just beginning to emerge in my mind that might suggest a role for accessibility metrics within the OU’s eLearning context. This was triggered by a presentation last week on another internal project on Learner Analytics. This might be the only bit in this 4,500+ word blog post that is original to me. However if that is not the case and anyone knows of a similar idea please flag it. If colleges give me the confidence that it is an idea worth exploring I will write it up as a briefing paper in the New Year.

The Open University has about 13,000 disabled students, It uses a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), based on Moodle, that manages the timely presentation of on-line resources to students as they undertake their studies. (It does more besides and there are other systems integrated with it and along side it but that description will suffice for this discussion.) The Learner Analytics project is exploring what data about the student’s experience of their studies can be readily extracted from the VLE and other systems and what could be meaningfully deduced from it. I have raised the possibility that what ever can be analysed could potentially be factored across disability types or even, my preference but more challenging, functional abilities. (There are some technical and some data protection issues here yet to be explored.)

For example, if comparing student completion rates across different modules (across all modules if you wish), it would be possible to detect if there was any different patterns for students with disabilities and then if it was different for students with a particular disability or ideally a particular access requirement.

Drop-out rates are a challenge for any university, funding is often linked to them, and even if not they are a key measure of the university’s success in its teaching and learning. Disabled students traditionally have had higher drop-out rates than students who have not declared a disability. So reducing drop-out rates among disabled students is a highly desirable goal. In the above example it will be possible, from the Learner Analytics to identify which Modules are apparently presenting significant barriers to students with disabilities (there could be other explanations).

Identifying the Module only gets us so far. A Module may be made up of hundreds of assets. The barriers to learning could be diverse and at the teaching and learning level or the technical level, or could be population selection effects, etc. However it seems to me reasonable to want to undertake an accessibility audit of the assets of this module. To be able to do so in an easy automated way, at least for the first pass, seems highly desirable. This is where there is a possible role for accessibility metrics. An accessibility metric, based on an agreed standard like WCAG 2.0 AA, could be assessed for all assets on their production and it travel with them in their metadata or be stored in a database. This cold be part of the “passport” approach. However even if this were not the case, when a set of assets to be investigated has been identified as suggested, automated testing of just those assets could be undertaken. If the metrics indicated that core elements of the course had major access challenges for the students who were dropping out then an intervention point has been identified and some information about its nature collected. Thus data for possible future Learner Analytics is generated. Ideally this accessibility perspective on drop-out could be checked against other data the university collects on reasons for drop-out possibly supplemental with interviews of a sample of the students concerned.

It must be stated that we have very little understanding as yet of the experience of OU students (and students in general) when studying on-line. There is another internal OU project that will be looking at that to some degree in the New Year. So for example we have no sense of the balance between possible reasons for drop-out among disabled students and therefore what is the correlation between access issues in Module assets and drop-out. Nor, how this issue compares in significance with others such as health issues, time demands, family issues, etc. However we can say that as more of the university’s teaching and learning goes on-line, accessibility is going to become of increasing importance to meeting the learning goals of our disabled students and managing it efficiently is going to be vital for the university. This approach in part addresses both those drivers.

References (not linked to above)

J.J. Dujmovic (1996) A Method for Evaluation and Selection of Complex Hardware and Software Systems. International Computer Measurement Group Conference, 368-378

Parmanto, B., & Zeng, X. M. (2005). Metric for web accessibility evaluation. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(13), 1394-1404.

‘Redrawing the Map of Learning’? The Experience at the First Plateglass University

Prof Fred Gray, University of  Sussex

Abstract

The University of Sussex, given its Royal Charter in August 1961, was the first ‘plateglass’ university. Five decades ago it was seen as part of ‘the greatest single expansion of higher education England has  ever known’.Sussexand the other new universities that followed it depended on critical elements of state intervention.

There was substantial new government funding for universities and students. And in place of the old apprenticeship system of university colleges controlled by the older and established universities, the new institutions began life as full universities – hence the Royal Charter – conferring their own degrees, ‘controlling their own curriculum and free to experiment as they think right’.

These new possibilities and freedoms allowed universities such as Sussex to innovate. To use the phrase of the first Vice-Chancellor, John Fulton, the Sussex mission was about ‘making the future’ for students and society by developing a radical new curriculum based on interdisciplinarity and using new organisational forms (departments were dispensed with). The purpose was to ‘provide undergraduates with the combined benefits of specialized and general education’. Asa Briggs, the driving force behind the developments at Sussex, saw this as ‘redrawing the map of learning’. But Sussex also drew on elements of higher education orthodoxy and could never (even if it had wanted to) throw off the tag of being ‘Balliol By The Sea’.

Just what was done at Sussex? What was the impact on students and faculty? How do we measure the success of the Sussex experiment? And how did the experiment change over time?

Notes

MC – My own questions and comments preceded by “MC”

Link to the event website with more details on the programme, speakers, etc.: http://www.tedxlondon.com/event/the_education_revolution_1

14:45 Session 1 – Hosted by Marcus Davey

What’s wrong?

A video introduction from Sir Ken Robinson

Direction for conversations:

Roundhouse cultural and political history

Why need a revolution?

Misused by politicians but need to get back to basics – politicians often talk about what their school experience was

Economic – education has powerful roles in growth and sustainability – but economies have changed

Cultural – students need to understand their own culture and identity but also to understand others

Personal – about people – lots of people dropping out of education – governments attempts to control education impede the addressing of the personal

All need for theatre is an actor in a space and an audience – parallel for education is what is needed is the relationship between the teachers and the learners

Core principles:

Education has to be personalised

Education has to be customised to the student’s context

Diversity – the drive to standardisation offends the principle of diversity – human life is inherently diverse and we need to celebrate that in education

Education needs to be a partnership with societies institutions

No more important conversation than how we transform education for the 21 century!

What’s happening?

Adam Roberts – Campaigner

Youth campaigner

The importance of questioning – of being critical

Young children are natural critical thinkers

Teenager – asking why am I learning this – often dismissed

Education revolution needs to come about throughout the way we assess children

Goal of education is independence

We don’t need more knowledge but more critical thinking

Questions are important

Tolerate a child’s willingness to think critically and engage them!

Georgia Allis Mills – School Student

I learn’t most this morning and haven’t been anywhere near school!

Education is a very loaded word.

Is learning waste of time – why are we learning things we don’t need to know in late life e.g.

Simultaneous equations

MC – some need to know those – I have used them – how do we best decide “what young people need to know”?

Goldie (video) – Artist, DJ and Actor

The education system is very old fashioned

“What I learnt in education was punctuality”

I learnt from good mentors in the real world – completely different from the way learning is organised in school

I am still learning every day

I knew what I wanted to see but did not know how to get there – that is what we need to give to kids

Carmel McConnell – Social Activist

Magic Breakfast – fuel for learning

Educational value:

In UK 1,000s of children can not access their education because they are hungry

1 in 4 children – only hot food they get is food they get at school

Magic breakfast improves attainment, punctuality, …

Dan Roberts – Teacher

Self confessed geek

Example from his own Maths lessons -

Exercise by exercise from books

Copying off board

Example of upside down calculator entries to spell funny or rude words – creative but not approved of by teachers

Technology can engage – can make life long learners – if users properly!

(Stories not noted)

The egg cam – free range chickens

Teleconferencing to Indonesia rebroadcast to their national TV – mass audience inspired kids

Saltash.net Enable – web app

What will maths lesson be in 2021?

Allowing students to use technology in amazing ways but some schools tend to ban and block!

www.unblocked.com

Entertainment

The Baker Brothers – Musicians

16:50 Session 2 – hosted by Adjoa Andoh

“Education dislocating people from their natural talent” – Ken Robinson

What’s right?

Nick Stanhope – CEO

Every spot on the planet has a vast extent of history behind it!

Can be represented as points on a map but need a 4th dimension

Overlaying old photos onto their modern equivalent

How scale up?

Dynamic mapping tools

Historic pictures onto street view

Moving comparative mapping

Making history an immersive experience

The important roles that schools play in capturing this history

Value on both sides – kids and older propel with their memories

Invitation to all schools batting involved!

Max Whitby – Filmmaker & Scientist

Theme of talk – floating

Apps for Touch Press

Very good demo floating a foil boat on dense gas but didn’t say what it was MC – frustrating to me!

Evan Grant – Creative Technologist
Arts and technology collective Seeper

Explored use of motion sensing technology firs typed to give access to music with kids with autism – created a sensory school. Immersive interactive technologies!

Video

Geoff Stead – Education Technologist

Sophie Bosworth – Student

Alternative paths to University

The ideas foundation

Education that prepares for after education:

Knowledge
Skills
Passion

Vocational education viewed as second class

Too many students not able to distinguish themselves after university to show what they are offering the word of work

Creativity is a cycle … Peddle it!

Professor Ken Spours – Professor of Education

Education is arguable the most important thing societies do!

Education is too important! …

To be treated as a political football

Complete absence of policy memory – no willingness to learn from the past.

A real revolution in the English system will mean agreement and acting in a different way

How?:

We should start by agreeing about out values

Everybody counts everybody can think and do

A law of care

????

Leave the world of “verses” and move to the world of “and”

We need to think ecologically about food

C.f Bruce from Finding Nemo

We need a Hypocratic oath for education:

The micro educational level of the learner

A dedication to the area

Politicians offer real leadership by giving power away!

Warning: if we do not take this line we will not see the good ideas we have seen today permeate our schools!

Entertainment

Tim Exile – Musicial, Performer and Developer

19:00 Session 3 – hosted by Steve Munday

Head teacher – how many messages you get telling you what to do!

Technology future can scare people in schools – but it must be embraced

What’s next?

Scott Snibbe – Artist, Filmmaker & Researcher

iPad Apps:

Bubble Harp

Use patters of nature to model something new – what maths was invented for

Work with Bork

(Too visual a presentation to note)

Ewan McIntosh – Entrepreneur

“What did you make at school today?”

Problem based learning – what we need is problem finders

Divergent thinking is where the future lies – need a bit of convergent thinking at the end to pull things together

Pledge – wants to engage 10,000 learners in problem finding curriculum

Emily Cummins – Inventor

Grandad taught to to design and work with wood while primary aged

This country would still be using the abacus if children had not taught their parents

Designed a toothpaste dispenser for other grandad – entered for technology competition

Invented a fridge for developing countries – open sourced it!

Why are we not using young people’s imagination and then trusting them?

Dougald Hine – Writer and Creator
A new kind of university

Life shaped by a university in exile who escaped higher ED because of where it was going

University promise:

Places dedicated to knowledge

We underestimate how little people change from century to century

Projects

The university of openness

Pick me up

The school of everything

Learning is not a commodity to be exchanged

Talking about first life not second life

The temporary school of thought

Let’s recycle Woolworths

Spacemakers

A DIY spirit and a culture of reflection

John Geraci quote

The Edgeless University – Demos

Hub Westminster

“I want to start a University”

Happening in many places

14-16Oct 2011 universities Past and Present (check out)

Jude Kelly OBE – Artistic Director

What does the future hold?

A review of inspirational women in the arts

Motivated by a burning sense of injustice
Telling of a personal journey

Thinking of changing tack – can only dream for yourself – so what can Southbank Centre do?

“The propaganda of the imagination”

I could be as daring and as bold as my predecessors

Events to date essentially for adults – need to turn this on it’s head

Taxes are there to create a bounty for the future of civilisation

A Call To Action – video message from Sir Ken Robinson

Drivers of change:

Population growth

Technology

Rate of change will accelerate

Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe

We don’t have to reinvent everything – many similar attempts in the past

E.g. Montessori, Piaget … … ….

Personalise curriculum

Intensive relationship between teachers and learners

The principles of all good education not just alternative education

Technologies have their role but are not the whole answer

He pledges his work and his support!

21:35 Event ends

One of the defining characteristics of humankind is its extensive use of tools; of technologies it has fashioned.  The fact that some people use additional or different tools to accomplish a task should emphasise their humanity not mark them out as different. Martyn Cooper 2010

This statement represents is a long held belief of the author who has worked on technology for disabled people since 1990. This blog post is not focussed on issues of discrimination but it illustrates the fact that the way we think about technology used by people with disabilities has impact beyond the functional.  Judgements are regrettably made about the person because of the tools they use.  This can affects the attitudes of disabled people to those tools.  Conversely designers of technology often assume all the users will be like them and do not design with the diversity of humanity in mind.  The way we think about technology and about disabled people impacts on the design and readiness of supply of appropriate tools that meet their needs in day to day life.

This blog post is seeking to draw together thoughts, from different perspectives, that impacts on those whose life, education, or work is affected by the use of technology in the context of disability.  Those involved in recommending technology to disabled people, formulating policy in the area or involved in the design of technology may find it useful. (It is fully recognised that disabled people may also be professionals in the field.)  This is not a guideline for professional practice but a collection of thoughts developed over the last 20 years.  It is hoped that it provides a collection of thinking that informs that practice and its further development.

There are many generic definitions of disability [See DDA[1] WHO – ICF[2] ] and thus definitions of accessibility focussing on reducing barriers to accessing the Web (e.g. Paciello[3], 2000; Web Accessibility Initiative[4], 2005).

The IMS Global Learning Consortium offers a more education specific definition of both disability and accessibility:

[..] the term disability has been re-defined as a mismatch between the needs of the learner and the education offered. It is therefore not a personal trait but an artifact of the relationship between the learner and the learning environment or education delivery. Accessibility, given this re-definition, is the ability of the learning environment to adjust to the needs of all learners. Accessibility is determined by the flexibility of the education environment (with respect to presentation, control methods, access modality, and learner supports) and the availability of adequate alternative-but-equivalent content and activities. The needs and preferences of a user may arise from the context or environment the user is in, the tools available (e.g., mobile devices, assistive technologies such as Braille devices, voice recognition systems, or alternative keyboards, etc.), their background, or a disability in the traditional sense. Accessible systems adjust the user interface of the learning environment, locate needed resources and adjust the properties of the resources to match the needs and preferences of the user. IMS Global Learning Consortium 2004

Technology may be for general usage or invented specifically to overcome a disability (assistive technology). In either case it needs to be designed inclusively, with diversity of users in mind. This principally means recognising that different people have different ways of interacting with technology. Some,as examples, may not be able to see a display and need audio output others may not be able to manipulate the standard controls but can be enabled to fully control the device in question a different way (e.g. keyboard alternatives to mouse control).

Man has been using technology for millennia.  The earliest examples of what might be described as assistive technology were probably sticks used as crutches or walking sticks.  The use of tools, of fashioned technologies, is a defining character of humanity.  The fact that some people use particular tools too overcome a disability should emphasise their humanity.

What is different about maths?
In written English it is the linear order of letters that conveys meaning. In Maths it is the 2 dimensional relative positioning of symbols, their relative sizes etc., that codes meaning. Maths is a symbolic language whose representation aids its manipulation. Examples of this are the way we readily cancel identical terms in algebraic equation, or the mantra I learnt at school for simple differentiation: “bring the power to the front and reduce the power by one” which soon becomes visualized around the symbolic representation.

This facilitation may or may not be persevered in alternative representations intended for disabled people; if not to what consequence? Because of this symbolic nature Maths raises additional issues when presented online in a learning context than an alphabetic language.

Maths issues across a process
How Maths is encoded is a web resource is only part of the challenge there are lots of interrelated issues from the facts that:

• The Maths needs to be authored by lecturers and different tools are available for this
• As well as the standard encoding in “main resource” in a VLE or other Web resource transformation to alternative formats will be required to meet the needs of some disabled students
• How the Maths is presented to the student depends on browser renderings (which vary) and client-side transforms e.g. speech synthesizer with refreshable Braille display
• Students need to be able to interact with the Maths not just passively read it; they need to copy it into documents, manipulate it and then communicate it with their tutors
• This student/tutor interaction may have to be facilitated by online communication in the symbolic language of Maths
• The challenges of Math need to be address in formative and summative assessments too

Issues of Encoding
Which way of encoding maths in a web page is most accessible? There is no one simple answer to this question! There are two major options:

• Images with alt-text descriptions
• Specialised maths mark-up – MathML

Encoding as images
With Maths encoded as images (e.g. generated from LaTeX) it is possible to implement the technology so that these images can be enlarged and colours changed; key access techniques for some visually impaired people and some with dyslexia. For those who can not see sufficiently Alt-Texts to such images are a possible solution but for simple maths only. Alt-Texts can be transformed to speech or Braille but this can be problematic and creating suitable Alt-Texts is not easy for complex expressions.

Encoding as MathML
MathML is an XML based mark-up language. There are two forms of MathML: Presentation Mark-up (how the mathematics should look) and Content Mark-up (which describes the semantics). The standard allows these to be used individually or in combination. Some of the accessibility advances of MathML derive from Presentation Mark-up some from Content Mark-up. However Presentation Mark-up alone is most commonly used and this restricts the potential accessibility advantages

Issues of Presentation
Where someone is not able to access the normal Maths presentation there are two possible tactics:

• Transform the visual representation into a form that can be accessed, or
• Provide an alternative means of accessing the underlying semantics (meaning)

Presentation to the student (or any user) is dependent on: the underlying coding of the Maths in the web resource; transformations made server-side (at the University) and how the browser interprets that code (inc. plug-ins). Transformations may also be made client-side (by the students’ computer and/or assistive technology).

Note on Maths & Braille
Braille is important to some visually impaired learners but <15% UK blind people (all ages) are competent Braille users. Some blind mathematicians extensively use maths Braille although a small percentage of blind people ever learn this. There are numerous variations in the way maths is encoded in the Braille schemes of different countries. Firstly English as represented in the Braille codes of the UK and the USA, for example, differ considerably; then UK Maths Braille differs from Nemeth Code commonly used in the USA and Marburg used in Germanic countries. Alt-texts of Maths expressions rendered as Braille by a screenreader and refreshable Braille display are not expressions in Maths Braille but Braille equivalents of the English descriptions of the Maths. A University’s response to the needs of Maths Braille users If a students preferred way of interaction with maths is through Maths Braille all reasonable steps should be made by the educational establishment to accommodate this. The Open University uses specialist external transcription agencies for this for course texts. However online presentation can be more challenging; e.g. in some formative assessments mathematical expressions are parameterised differently on each visit by the student. It can be difficult to accommodate the needs of Maths Braille users in such circumstances depending on implementation.

Issues of Interaction
Maths presented online is not to be just passively read. Students need to interact with and manipulate the Maths. They may need to:

• Copy it into documents
• Import it into maths engines (Mathematica, Maple, etc.)
• Exchange maths expressions with tutors and peers in forums, e-mails, etc,

Issues of Pedagogy
Mathematics is used differently in different contexts. For example compare level 3 Maths course with the basic calculations in an introduction to social-science course. What learning path are we a seeking to take the student through over their period of study? For the disabled student this might include a transition in the way they interact with mathematics. There is a long asked question here: how do people learn. In this case the question is made more complex by the secondary question: how do different presentations of Maths affect the learning? Don’t forget assessment! Techniques students use in their learning must be available in their assessments both summative and formative.

Current Practice at the OU
The Maths department normally writes courses in TeX; however other departments/faculties vary and includes the use the Equation Editor for Word. For long texts PDFs are produced with figure descriptions. Audio descriptions maybe recorded e.g. as for MU123 (pre-calculus basic level maths) ~ 3,500 students / year. The VLE program (2005-2008) produced a MathML filter – if MathML there it can be displayed. Graphics presentation or access to MathML is selected as a user option.

Browser Issues – Issues of Support for the OU
[This section updated following personal communication from Paul Topping, President and CEO, Design Science, Inc.]
There can be problems for a student setting up for MathML (different browser issues). IE requires a plug-in from Design Science called MathPlayer (they are currently developing the plug-in for I.E. 9.0). Firefox does not support MathML in HTML but does support it in XHTML.  Chrome, Safari and Opera web browsers support MathML natively (however there are some version and consistency of display issues). This presents an IT support challenge so for this reason the OU-VLE defaults to displaying images.

MathML in the OU-VLE
User’s can select if Images or MathML presented; if the former the VLE converts MathML to an image. We are trying to improve image quality resulting from this process. VLE user settings cover size and colour contrast preferences. However these approaches still not used a great deal but students – but also not been widely promoted. There has only been 1 presentation of introductory course MU123 so far. We don’t really know how helpful these approaches are being to disabled students. Some non-disabled people using image enlargement (picked up from forums) others have discovered that TeX within $$ $$ is rendered by Moodle (this is a Moodle feature not turned off – but not advertised).

What the OU is seeking to move towards
We want to get things on VLE in more interactive fashion and to more easily manage student choices of what presentations best suit them. There are usability issues we want to address; e.g. when in a quiz radio buttons are displayed next to a MathML rendered expression it is easy to click on expression which produces and enlargement instead of selecting the radio button, this is due to Design Science plug-in feature. We also want to overcome current problem some delay when loading multiple images.

Outstanding Issues
What format should be specified as the base format maths should be stored in before transformation to other formats as required? – Some argue for MathML others TeX What are the best authoring tools to offer academics that need to write courses containing Maths? MathML only currently only used on a few courses so we have had limited experience with it. We don’t know enough about the users! – This is a planned subject for future research. A new course M347 Mathematical statistics will be making substantial use of MathML. It is the first upper level Maths course to be presented on VLE only – first presentation due Feb 2012. It will be a crucial course for institutional learning – we will know a lot more in 1-2 years!

Unresolved dilemmas
There are issues of how to meet disabled students needs without reducing quality for the rest. E.g. where MathML used > 95% of students not receiving benefits of MathML – and receive arguably poorer visual rendering of the maths but no complaints about this have been received. There is the possibility of supplementing MathML with an images supplied from original TeX.

There are curriculum issues, of “graduateness”:
Shouldn’t all maths graduates be able to produce nicely formatted printed Maths, therefore should we teach TeX/LaTeX)? Further should mathematical notation itself be part of the curriculum? – E.g. tree structures, order of operations, etc.

Concluding comment
Making mathematics fully accessible to a diversity of people in online learning is not a solved problem. Nor are the options for presenting maths online generally optimally resolved. However it is clear that one solution will not suit all users and contexts and thus flexibility is key!

The rationale for personalisation for accessibility is clear.  Accessibility is essentially dealing with diversity – personalisation avoids the always flawed attempt of doing so by a “one size fits all” solution.

There are different approaches to achieving personalisation for accessibility.  These may be used in combination.  Any systems developer has to consider which, if any, of these can be adopted within its specification, which need to be considered as likely for future adoption and thus raise an issue for future proofing or which are unlikely to be adopted in their context. The different approaches are:

• User selected options directly controlled from the (web) interface
• User profiles containing preferences that can be set for all content and tools
• User profiles used to select style sheets applied server side
• User profiles used in combination with accessibility content metadata to facilitate content personalisation, e.g. automatic serving of alternative formats

There is a close link between meeting the mobile platform agenda and personalisation for accessibility. The approaches adopted for both should be considered in tandem.  (One way to view mobile is a special case of accessibility requirements).

Content personalisation approaches can facilitate greater browser independence.

Only limited user requirements work has been done on personalisation for accessibility. Examples include from the EU4ALL project and the BBC’s ”MyDisplay” (probably the most significant enterprise level approach to personalisation for accessibility).

Notes were made in the report on key drivers, ongoing standards work and emerging technologies that are likely to impact significantly on content personalisation for accessibility in the near future.  These include soon anticipated technical innovation; maturing technical standards and new and updated legislation, accessibility standards and codes of practice.  Without further comment here these key divers include:

• WAI-ARIA work in W3C
• The IMS project group developing AccessForAll 3.0
• HTML 5.0
• Mobile technologies
• The cloud-based accessibility vision is being driven in an initiative called NPII/GPII (National Public Inclusive Infrastructure/Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure)
• In the USA Section 508 refresh
• W3C’s WCAG 2.0,
• In the European Union Mandate 376
• In the UK BS 8878:2010 Web accessibility – Code of practice

Rich Schwerdtfeger (Chief Technology Officer Accessibility, IBM Software Group, based in Austin, Texas) considers we are reaching a “Perfect Storm” (excuse the American cliché) that should promote the widespread adoption of advanced and systems based approaches to accessibility such as personalisation.  I think that a lot more pieces of the picture are now in place than 5 years ago but the challenge remains the political will (in diverse organisations and companies) to bring these together to facilitate systems that truly adapt to meet people’s access needs.

Wed, 9 Feb 2011

[all times CET = GMT+1]

09:00 – 09:45

09:50 – 10:20

Prof. Alan Hurst (Skill: National Bureau for Students with Disabilities, UK)

1. Shifting from a medical (deficit) model to a social model
2. Trying to encourage disabled students to live as independently as possible and enable choice
3. Focus not on equality (treating everybody the same – we are not the same) but on equity (treating fairly).

E.g. Teachability Project in Scotland.

What are the core requirements every student must be able to do?  Then can define reasonable adjustments.

Curriculum requirements

In UK obsession with facilitation of attendance – but UK university doing best for disabled students requires little attendance – The Open University [thanks for the plug Alan!]

What about assessment?  How much scope for flexibility? What information do we give students and how early?  Difference between modified assessment (e.g. additional time) or alternative assessment (e.g assessment in sign language).  Who is responsible fr making assessment arrangements?  It must be a mainstream task to do this not the task of a disability unit.

What about quality?  The role of the professional bodies.  The danger of the “we have always done it that way” syndrome!

Information provision to disabled students before start university – accessibility of web based information systems.

Students participation in social life.  E.g. integrated accommodation.

What about carers guidance, access to higher level study?

The Law

• Reasonable Adjustments
• Anticipatory Duties

Good course delivery practice anticipating needs reduces need to reasonable adjustments – cost and time savings!

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) – Code of Practice Part 3 (Disabled Students)

(Examples given but not noted here)

“A law cannot guarantee what a culture will not give” (Mary Johnson 2003)

More important than the law is changing people attitudes.

Evidence of major progress:

When disability services are seen as value added provision  in universities rather than additional institutional expense

11:15 – 11:25

Andrea Petz (Johannes Kepler University of Linz)
Klaus Miesenberger (Johannes Kepler University of Linz)

• Implementation issues for accessibility in eAssessment
• Accessibility in eAssessment as a quality issue
• Formative and summative assessment – compare and contrast accessibility issue
• Relationship between access accommodations and assessment objectives
• Subject specific issues of accessibility in eAssessment
• Designing systems and questions for the diversity of users computer interactions approaches
• Feedback mechanisms and their accessibility
• Content personalisation in eAssessment (managing question variants and choices)
• Accessibility and eAssessment standards (e.g. IMS QTI)

A key point in the talk was that many of the issues of accessibility to the web were the same as when wanting to serve web pages to mobile devices.  The below is adapted from one of Rich’s slides:

Personalisation approaches depend on preferences profiles.  Rich raised the possibility for mobile devices to include the users preferences thus negating the need for a “preferences server” in this case.

The information needed for personalisation was summarised in the following slide:

Rich also introduced the AccessForAll 3.0 specification which I will blog about when it is released for public comment in a month or so.

Rich gave and overview of the National Public Inclusive Infrastructure (NPII).  This provides software enhancements to the nation’s broadband  Infrastructure to ensure that people facing interface barriers due to ageing, disability, or literacy can use broadband information and services available to others.  It supports AccessForAll 3.0.

The below slide shows the multiple approaches that are possible, as supported by the NPII:

The presentation finished highlighting the importance of this approach to accessibility to education.

[All slides used with permission and thanks to Rich Schwerdtfeger (IBM) and Gregg Vanderheiden (The Trace Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison ).]