inclusive design – sue watling

captcha by golly wow – another boob by the beeb

Sue Watling / August 3, 2011 / digital exclusion 2010, equality and diversity, inclusive design, visual impairment

Captchas have always been exclusive; firstly it took time to convince designers an alternative to the visual code was necessary and secondly when audio options were finally provided they were next to useless. If you haven’t tried an audio captcha then you should. They are typical of the tokenistic attitudes which underlie the majority of web design and development. I don’t know what’s worse – content provided in a single fixed format or an alternative version which doesn’t work.

The BBC has come up with the worst alternative yet. Try emailing an article (I tried with an article about pulling the plug on the NHS e-records system after 9 years of failures – I thought the synchronicity was apt!) To complete the email link process you need to use a captcha. When you select the listen option a QuickTime file opens and initially it sounds good; for once you can actually make out what is being said – but once you’ve listened you realise file has taken over the window with no way of return to the original page where the captcha was in the first place. Nice one BBC. Did you not think to try it out on anyone first?

blurry hell…

Sue Watling / September 22, 2010 / digital divide, digital exclusion 2010

I’ve got restricted vision again and ‘seeing’ the Internet differently. Tokenism, surface allegiance to accessibility legislation, is common. My pet hates include those little ‘A’s increasing in size but not to any useful extent; clicking them isn’t as easy as you might think; they are small, and where they only increase the text frame navigation and other peripheral content remains the same.

I can change my Browser settings to Largest and increase everything that’s scalable but this highlights the amount of content that isn’t. More frustration as text gets cut off or wraps on top of itself.

I need to re-set to Largest when I change sites and incidently, Largest isn’t Large enough. I know there’s the Ctrl and mouse wheel trick that zooms in and that’s how I’m operating but it takes two hands and a degree of manual dexterity, not to mention a mouse with a wheel and knowing about it in the first place! Without screen magnifying software, nothing affects the size of the menu bars and buttons. The brain tries to adjust but the combination of large and original text is difficult to interpret especially with menus such as Save and its drop down lists of options. The contrast is marked and the original text size appears even more tiny. Headaches and additional eye strain is never far away.

Onto my blog. With Browser set to Largest I find my posted text isn’t responding and I need the mouse trick. The main Dashboard then becomes a touch problematic as it appears very wide. I have to scroll or arrow backawards and forwards from left to right to see it all. The drop down menus have become separated horizontally from each other. I can’t seem to get into them with keyboard commands, making it quite a fun game to try and jump across the gap to hit the Dashboard for my blog.

Adding images is a bit of a nightmare; zoomed to a workable size the menu gets stuck and becomes unusable for example the image below shows how I can’t scroll down any further.

As you can see I made it but the whole process has taken much longer and is more complex and instead of enjoying working online it’s frustrating. I’ve achieved far less than I normally would have done in the hour and doing less causes additional problems. I’m currently looking at Dragon Naturally Speaking for times like this; I think it would be useful on lots of different levels so watch this space – if you can.

simulations: a personal perspective

Sue Watling / May 10, 2009 / digital divide, inclusive design

Treatment for a recurrent sight condition renders me temporarily visually impaired; a situation that can last for weeks, even months. Details get blurred and out of focus, there are no sharp lines or clear distinctions. Because it affects one eye more than the other I can manage but the lived experience of being denied access to text and images and video – albeit instructional, informative or for fun – is both challenging and informative. I realise at first hand how short term simulations may give a temporary insight but can’t replicate the unified whole – it’s the gestalt principle in action. Computer simulations show the part but they can’t show the sum of the parts. They can’t represent the levels of tiredness and the exhaustion of trying, the frustration of not achieving and the isolation of missing out on what everyone else is sharing. You think you know what something is like but to adapt the adage – it’s no good wearing someone else’s shoes – you have to walk in them too.

I suspect that with visual information; in particular digital data, we design following a ME Model (MEM). If we can access it then we assume others can too. We also resist change in practice. Habits get engrained. I’ve listened to a screen reader repeat file names for a pictures that tell the user nothing about their content yet if I know that if I’m in a hurry then I’m equally guilty of not adding meaningful alternative text to digital images.

There is a paradox in educational technology where the potential to widen access is undermined by a dependency on inclusive design. As the use of virtual environments increases, so the gap between public policy and private practice grows wider. Digital data reflects social and cultural norms and lived experience. Those who create and upload content are often influenced by their own needs and requirements rather than anticipating those of their audience. Access to this information is then limited by the forms in which it is made available. This approach disadvantages users who are unable to access electronic data available only in single or fixed formats. Legislation alone is not enough to outlaw discriminatory attitudes. Promoting inclusive design involves challenging perceptions in order to make explicit the rationale behind the need to alter existing practice. As Jane Seale says in eLearning and Disability in Higher Education (2006) if the responsibility to be proactive is not more widely adopted then the same educational technology that is used to widen participation will in itself become a restriction.

language

Sue Watling / April 5, 2009 / inclusive design

I’ve been reading an account of the life of the Russian psychologist Vygotsky, written by his daughter, in 1994. Gita describes how her father worked with physically handicapped and mentally retarded children, how he founded a laboratory to study the psychology of abnormal children and how the laboratory was upgraded to be the Experimental Institute of Defectology. In a sad sentence, Gita writes:

“Vygotsky was always able to establish an atmosphere of trust and rapport with the children, he always talked with them as though they were equals, always paid attention to their answers. In turn, the children opened up to him in a way they never did with other examiners.”

Vygotsky was 37 when he died of TB in 1934. Gita wrote her account in 1994 with no apparent self-consciousness about using language that would be considered inappropriate in this country but still reflects social and cultural attitudes in Russia today. Language is key; if we were to substitute disability for difference and accessible for inclusive, we might have more success in changing attitudes.

visual impairment

Sue Watling / March 28, 2009 / digital divide, inclusive design

Supporting visually impaired people using the internet highlights how little attention is paid to ensuring websites are accessible. It’s frustration overload; as if finding your way around the keyboard isn’t difficult enough you are then reliant on ‘listening’ to a disembodied electronic voice reading out the html sitting behind the website. It can’t make assumptions or use previous knowledge; it can only read what the designer has put there.

Online information is still designed primarily to be a visual experience. There are standards and guidelines galore but wouldn’t it be easier to ask a visually impaired person what works and what doesn’t work?

A leading supermarket has done some work on making its online shopping site accessible to the visually impaired. BUT there are still problems. It’s 2009. What happened to compliance with disability legislation that started over a decade ago? Why is it that the most vulnerable members of our society – to whom internet access can offer opportunities to re-engage through digital data – are still being discriminated against?

It’s not a technical issue; it’s a human one – it’s a social, cultural and political one. The Internet could be fully accessible and it isn’t; and that reflects badly on everyone of us working with virtual environments.

Esref Armagan

Sue Watling / March 9, 2009August 8, 2009 / digital divide, inclusive design

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/L3AgO6H0H98" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

the words disability and equality seem further apart than ever

Sue Watling / February 27, 2009 / digital divide, inclusive design

On the BBC blog The Editors Peter Horrocks (19 Feb) tells how he asked TV news presenters ‘if they would please spell out URLs, e-mail addresses and phone numbers ….[as] a significant number of blind people use television news’. Commentators, and one reported “BBC insider”, have said: “This is political correctness gone mad.” Peter responds with ‘It is not. This issue is not about avoiding causing offence. It’s about information and how to access it.’

Here’s a selection of ensuing comments:

• How would a blind person be able to turn on a computer, open up a web browser find the navigation bar and type in bbc.co.uk or some other web address?
• How can blind people surf the internet anyway? If they can’t read the URL on the page, how are they supposed to read the page once it had loaded?
• Someone please tell me, how a blind person can navigate a mouse around a webpage when they can’t see where the mouse is and can’t see where they want to place the mouse cursor. If they could achieve that, then they surely could drive a car from one town to another! Not sure the Police would be too happy about it.
• while accessibility is indeed a noble cause, making things less convenient for the overwhelming majority of people to make things slightly easy for a very small few is not sensible.
• How useful is a website going to be to a blind person if they can’t even see the website in the first place!! So what value is there in reading out aloud the web URL to blind people if they can’t even access the website!
• Disabled people need to be given OPTIONS like subtitles, which they have already; we don’t need the concessions made to them to be imposed on the rest of us.

Some days the words disability and equality seem further apart than ever.

Accessibility

Sue Watling / October 24, 2008 / digital divide, inclusive design

Within 24 hours I’ve had not one but two encounters with accessibility issues. Both demonstrated negativity towards the concepts of reasonable adjustment and alternative versions in relation to teaching and learning resources. This is my resulting rant and reflection – please check out the links at the end. You just never know, one day the thread of your reality may be cut without warning!

Some background: ten years ago I worked in community education and set up a number of computer training rooms for people with disabilities; the work was funded with short term project grants – which is indicative of the reality for the socially disabled – where support and training is dependent on charities and the kindness of strangers. I am continually reminded that the situation with regard to respect and consideration cannot be said to have significantly improved over the past decade.

Over a year ago the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) was subsumed into the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). There is growing debate over whether this has been in the best interests of people who struggle with seeing, hearing, mobility or cognitive impairments (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7643844.stm)

Why is this relevant here? Well, as a public institution, the University of Lincoln has a duty to ensure it can demonstrate proactivity in anticipating barriers to access. However, a recognised need to be inclusive is not enough to ensure institutional change. Across the HE sector, disability support units are rarely integrated into teaching and learning units and the locus of disability awareness continues to exist on the periphery. For me accessibility is about removing barriers to participation and engagement. That means a holistic attitude towards the creation of accessible content. It’s not something that can be bolted on either as an afterthought or because someone has had to request an alternative version.

All staff should be aware of this single page document produced by the JISC legal team Accessibility Law for eLEarning Authors

Staff should also visit Accessibility in Learning produced by JISC and TechDis in conjuction with the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA). This new online resource looks at eight categories of users; those who have difficulty seeing, hearing, understanding, concentrating, manipulating things, communicating with others, accessing text and who are dyslexic – and provides practical guidelines practical guidelines for making learning materials more accessible.

The information is out there; the responsiblity for acting on it is down to the individual.

If you still need convincing read some of these accounts from students accessing higher education. Go to ALERT (University of Bournemouth) and DART (Loughborough University) and the most recent JISC funded research at LExDis (University of Southampton) to sample the student experience first hand.