{"id":1447,"date":"2019-11-01T11:05:26","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T11:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/?p=1447"},"modified":"2019-11-22T10:29:05","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T10:29:05","slug":"accessibility-awareness-for-online-education-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ucem.ac.uk\/onlineeducation\/posts\/1447","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility Awareness for Online Education Department"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter, Graham, and I planned an accessibility awareness session for the Online Education Department\u00a0 (OED) with the help from Richard, our Disability and Wellbeing Adviser. We wanted the session to be interactive and hands-on. We also wanted it to be more technical than the general accessibility awareness sessions we run at UCEM because the OED team works with coding and all learning technologies used at UCEM.<\/p>\n

\"Post-it<\/a>
Accessibility workshop feedback<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So the session was split into two parts: the first part was to introduce accessibility awareness, which I took charge and the second part about accessibility testing, which Graham prepared and presented. In my part of the session we planned three hands-on activities so that participants get a chance to practice what we present.<\/p>\n

Again, the session went very well and we received really good feedback.<\/p>\n

However, one question that Louise posed got me thinking. She asked whether we are sufficiently helping students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders. I knew the WCAG guidelines were there considering all accessibility enhancements but I wanted to dig into it a little more.<\/p>\n

So I watched this AbilityNet<\/a>\u00a0recorded webinar on Autism and Accessibility, Design Challenges and Solutions<\/a>\u00a0to improve my understanding. WCAG can provide a baseline to provide autism accessibility and they highlighted these criteria:<\/p>\n