MOOC e-Portfolio
Week 1: Introduction to Course, Demographics, Universal Design
Week 2: Accessible Documents
Week 3: Complex Images, Tables, Graphs
Week 4: Captioning
Week 5: Uncovered Topics, Resources & Review
Basics of Inclusive Design for Online Education
University of Colorado Boulder
January 2020
Demographics - Universal Design
Objectives
Issues that affect course accessibility. The topic of course accessibility will include an interview with two students who use Assistive Technology to access digital material.
USA demographics on disability
Reflections on Module 1
Week 1 assignment
The importance of UDL is well presented in the interview with Sheryl Burgsthaler (Univ. Washington), responsible by DoIT website
Accessible Documents
Objectives
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Distinguish between accessibility issues that arise from the learning environment and those that arise from the course content.
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Create an accessible Word document using Styles.
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Create an accessible PDF file using tags.
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Create an accessible Powerpoint document using Slide Layout.
Reflexions on Module 2
This module made a refresh on the accessibility of text documents, mainly on Microsoft tools (and Mac).
I think that it should approach accessibility of free tools such as Google Drive.
Considering MS tools and latest Office versions, some recent features are not referred, such as «immersive reader» in Word and MS Edge browser.
The accessibility checker in Word and PPT is always pertinent to highlight, as well as the PDF accessibility and the saving of Word documents properly structured into PDF files.
These issues are not new to me but are very important for users who are not aware of digital barriers.
In a portuguese online course, promoted in 2016 on e-Accessibility, I've produced a few videos, that I recall here.
Images - Tables - Graphs
Objectives
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Give examples of best practices for describing images.
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Identify specific considerations when writing descriptions for complex images, such as tables and graphs.
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Write alternate text for images in Word, Powerpoint and PDF documents.
Reflexions on Module 3
This module offers a set of tutorials on the importance of describing images, tables and graphs, so that screen readers may read them .
It recalls that captioning well an image may avoid an extensive alt+text, recommending a 100 character description.
A more detailed description may be required for complex diagrams and tables.
Web tools tend to be more and more accessible, respecting the international guidelines. This will facilitate the task of users-producers. Wix web creator provides a tutorial on the accessibility of the tool, highlighting the importance of structure and «styles», as well as image and video tags.
Other tools have plugin and there are widgets such as UserWay which can be installed in different tools to check accessibility UserWay youtube channel
Captioning
Objectives
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Describe benefits of captioning and transcription.
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Identify the tools available and best practices for creating your own captions.
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Create transcripts and captions for videos.
Reflections on Module 4
The module focus on the captioning tool AMARA, which I've used a few years ago. However, since Youtube developed the feature of subtitling and this became very easy to manipulate, I stopped using https://amara.org/pt/
Youtube has improved the service and a new beta studio is in use.
The tutorials presented in the course relate to the «creator studio», which I still use, but in fact the transition is friendly and the course videos need some updating.
The automatic captioning of Youtube is not reliable, though in EN is not so bad as for other languages like PT.
In case one follows a transcript to narrate a video, it's easy to convert this text document into a .txt file and import it to Youtube which will automatically syncronize the captions.
In case one doesn't have a text one can edit the automatic captions and correct them.
Youtube allows to access the imported txt file and turns it into a transcript.
