How-to Guide: Accessibility Evaluation
“Colleges and Universities have a more diverse student body than ever before—this includes a growing number of students with disabilities. Many of these students are attracted to the flexibility and anonymity of learning online. However, research suggests that students with disabilities often face barriers learning online. ”
All websites benefit from accessibility evaluations as they identify barriers that impact individuals with disabilities and all users. The evaluations provide learning designers with identifiable problems to remediate and prevent new problems from occurring.
Evaluations fall into three categories:
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
Learning designers evaluate any of the categories depending on their position. Basic evaluations are typically requested of an existing learning experience or website, including external documents like Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, and PDF documents. Intermediate and advanced evaluations are conducted at a higher level within any organization and involve software and IT departments. One example of collaboration among these departments would be that your IT department installs a Web Accessibility Checker like SiteImprove to constantly monitor web accessibility across all web-based properties across their organization. Once installed, tools like SiteImprove become an automatic extension of the organization’s environment and allow developers to identify accessibility issues during the comprehensive development process. Basic evaluations tend to be processed manually after the fact, while intermediate and advanced evaluations are built-in extensions to evaluate accessibility needs.
So, where do we begin when evaluating accessibility for websites, learning experiences, documents, and other formats of user activity?
LearningMatters, LLC developed a template in 2024 to evaluate accessibility in an easy-to-read, simple-to-complete format.
Source: LearningMatters, LLC (2024). Request to Make a Copy of the Google Drive File Here.
To complete the evaluation, use the following resources to observe if the category has passed or failed:
I hope this assists you in your journey to promote accessible experiences for all learners and users. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Thank you for joining me today! Let’s keep learning altogether, as lifelong #LearningMatters.
Best,
Laura Lawson
LauraLawsonMT@gmail.com
(817) 319-1820
Sources:
Lowenthal, P. R., & Lomellini, A. (2023). Accessible online learning: A preliminary investigation of educational technologists' and faculty members' knowledge and skills. TechTrends, 67(2), 384–392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00790-1
