Accessibility

It turns out there are more issues to making educational materials accessible online than I ever would have imagined.

First you have to make sure your information is clear and understandable.

Then you want to make sure you provide the material in multiple formats for different learning styles.

Then you have to worry about browsers. Can people with Firefox and Safari access this as well as people with Internet Explorer? Can people with newer and older versions of those browsers access this?

Next you have to worry about bandwidth. Is this file too big to download quickly? Will video and audio take too long to load for people that do not have high speed Internet access?

After attending a presentation on WebCT/Blackboard accessibility now I know educational materials need to be accessible in very specific ways for those with disabilities as well.

I assumed providing an alternate text tutorial to my video tutorials was enough but legally I am required to provide captions for each video.

Our Institute for Disability Studies provides a really neat "Webcasting Captioning Decision Tree" at http://www.usm.edu/ids/accessforall/caption

Just answer the questions and follow the flow chart to see what your podcast requires to make it accessible to everyone.

I'm lucky that Camtasia provides an option for captions. I just have to go back and figure out how to do it! :)