From Curb Cuts to Alt Tags: Accessible Design Benefits All
On a warm spring day you are walking down a sidewalk on Washington Avenue. A rollerblader whizzes by, almost knocking you over. As you cross the street, a woman passes briskly, roller bag in tow. Though we may take it for granted, everyone is able to navigate the sidewalk unimpeded because it has been designed with accessibility in mind. Curb cuts on sidewalks were first created to accommodate people who used wheelchairs and walkers. Thanks to disability activists, sidewalk curb cuts made their first appearance on the University of California, Berkeley campus in 1970. With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act twenty years later, curb cuts are now required. Initially viewed as an accommodation to the disabled, curb cuts benefit everyone.
Adaptive Technology Specialist Phil Kragnes, Academic Computing, Office of Information Technology (OIT) and Disability Services (DS), argues that the same principle applies to technology: accessible design benefits everyone. Kragnes currently is involved in the process of creating the University of Minnesota Accessibility Institute, a multi-departmental, interdisciplinary effort that also includes Kari Branjord, Enterprise Applications Development, OIT; Simin Hickman, Academic Computing, OIT; Michael Olesen, Digital Technology Center; and Peggy Mann Rinehart, DS. The focus of the institute will be the accessibility of information technology, Web, hardware, and software policies and impacted environments. The ultimate goal is to make accessibility intrinsic to work cycles everywhere in the University. In the meantime, instructors can incorporate universal design principles and practices as they design course materials. Kragnes described for us some typical scenarios and the benefits of accessible design.
Instructors often distribute Microsoft Word documents through WebVista course sites or e-mail. This in itself is a step towards better accessibility; blind, visually impaired, or learning disabled students can use a screen reader that will transform the written text into speech. But a poorly designed document can thwart their efforts to understand it. Kragnes advises instructors to format different sections of a document with the styles feature built into word processing programs such as Microsoft Word. For example, instead of selecting each heading of the same level and clicking the bold and then the centered horizontal alignment button, instructors should apply the same heading style and format that style as bold centered text. Screen readers then can translate structural markup that conveys visual cues to guide sighted readers through a document. Text that has simply been formatted to appear visually as a heading (i.e., bolded and centered) will not be reported as such by a screen reader. Instead, a screen reader user will hear "heading 1, heading 2, heading 3. . . ." And as Kragnes points out, everyone can benefit from the use of styles. If the creator of the document wants to change how headings are displayed (e.g., alignment, size, color), he or she can simply change the style once rather than selecting each instance of that heading and formatting it separately.
Web pages also can be extremely unaccommodating to those with visual impairments, especially when pictures and other graphics are used to provide information that is crucial for making sense of the content. But instructors need not abandon graphics. Instead, Kragnes advises they use alt tags to provide "alternative" textual information about graphic content. Alt tags are an essential navigation component for users of speech recognition applications, handheld devices, or when connection speeds are slow and image loading is disabled.
Kragnes has some tips about writing good alt tags. If the screen reader reads out "photo," the user has not been provided with any useful information, and hearing it repeated over and over can be maddening. Kragnes advises instructors to provide the same information a sighted person would comprehend visually. For example, while "University word mark" technically is an accurate description of the University of Minnesota logo, it is better to say "University of Minnesota." And while some people provide too little information in their alt tags, others are well intentioned but provide too much. "Well-formed, but succinct descriptions" are key, says Kragnes.
As technology continues to evolve, it brings both progress and new challenges. Although screen readers and other accommodations make it possible to access a variety of information technology, some technologies do not promote accessibility. Mouse-driven applications that do not provide keyboard alternatives, such as UMConnect Meeting or the discussion tool in WebVista, are inaccessible to students with visual or motor disabilities. Wimba Voice Tools and podcasts are accessible to the visually impaired, but the cost and time required to transcribe those materials for the hearing impaired can be prohibitive. Instructors and others involved in course design should anticipate such challenges and be prepared to maximize the benefits of educational technologies for all. Kragnes' hope is that designing for accessibility will be woven into the cultural fabric of the University.
