WAI Curricula/List of Courses

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Objective

The main objective of this resource is to create a list of publicly available courses on digital accessibility. This resource aims to provide users with a transparent, objective, and vendor-neutral comparison of different offerings of education, training, and certification on digital accessibility.

Background: Despite the wide range of training resources available, current programs often use divergent and conflicting terms and concepts. The lack of a common reference to describe existing offerings often results in a fragmentation of education, training, and certification. As a result, this creates confusion for people seeking to further their knowledge about digital accessibility. This resource intends to assist with effort savings when looking for digital accessibility courses and accelerate the rate of accessibility implementation.

Audience

Primary audience of this resource concerns:

  • Consumers
    • Individual consumers - selects training offers to learn or get certified on accessible product design or development
      • E.g. Software developer, designer, content author, accessibility tester
    • Organizational consumers - selects training offers to build training programs for people in the organization
      • E.g. Training managers
  • Providers
    • Professional training and certification providers - publishes information about their offerings; does market research to compare their offering with other offerings
      • E.g. Professional associations
    • Formal education providers - publishes information about their offerings; does market research to compare their offering with other offerings
      • E.g. Private sector providers, Public education providers
    • Other providers - publishes information about their offerings; does market research to compare their offering with other offerings
      • E.g. Accessibility Consultant

Secondary audience of this resource concerns:

  • Product manager - selects training to learn or get certified on how to include accessibility requirements into his or her products
  • Hiring manager - compares courses and certifications to assess the competencies of candidates to hire
  • Policy and decision maker - selects courses to learn about accessibility requirements that policies must abide to
  • Legal - selects courses to learn about accessibility requirements that policies must abide to
  • Procurer - learns about accessibility certifications to include in Requests for Proposals
  • Researcher - selects training to complement current expertise with accessibility knowledge

Resources

This activity will establish a centralised list of current education, training, and certification offerings.

The resources considered include:

  1. List of education, training, and certification offerings, including:
    1. Interface with a sidebar with filters (for example for roles, languages, and other aspects to be defined), and a main area listing offers that match the selected filters
    2. Database containing the offers
  2. Mechanism for offers providers to provide and update information about their offers, including:
    1. Contact form for offers providers enter details about their offers
    2. Back-office for W3C staff to update the offerings based on the details entered by the providers

Approach

  • Initial dataset of resources:
    • Explore existing criteria for describing resources
    • Refine categories and taxonomy, including:
      • Title
      • Provider
      • Country
      • Description
      • Type of resource (graduate program, undergraduate program, professional certification, training, other)
      • Audience (content author, designer, developer, manager, tester, general, other)
      • Level (basic, intermediate, advanced)
      • Prerequisites
      • Topics
      • WAI Curricula module
      • Language
      • Format (face-to-face, online, blended, hybrid)
      • Scheduling (scheduled, unscheduled)
      • Platforms
      • Accessibility support
      • Length
      • Cost (free, free with certificates for purchase, free for limited content or duration, free or reduced fee for some, paid)
      • Website
      • Reviews page
      • Last updated (resource information)
      • Last updated (resource content)
      • Availability (from, until)
  • Develop and deploy a web page for entering new resources:
    • Develop filters and data format
    • Develop data entry
    • Guidebook for providers wanting to add a resource to the list (containing detailed information on the required data for new entries)
    • Established workflow and documentation to ensure the authenticity of listed resources
  • Develop and deploy a web page to list and filter resources
  • Invite providers to enter data
  • Launch first version
  • Expansion of resources and maintenance support services (e.g. edit entries, advanced filter)

Submission process

  1. The form submission creates a GitHub PR with the form data, plus some extra metadata
  2. The list maintainer verifies the information and, if needed, communicates with providers
    1. Mark status with GitHub Milestones (Waiting for provider response; Ready to review; or Out of scope)
    2. If ready to review, assign the PR to the list reviewer
  3. The list reviewer confirms the resource is ready to be published
    1. Mark status with GitHub Milestones (Verification needed; Ready to publish; or Out of scope)
    2. If ready to publish, assign the PR to the publisher
  4. The publisher merges the GitHub PR

Current roles and people involved:

  • List Maintainer: Letícia Seixas Pereira, FCID
  • List Reviewer: Carlos Duarte, FCID
  • Publisher: Shawn Henry, WAI

Notes:

  • All conversations between providers and the list maintainer should include its own private mailing list on copy to register all exchanges.
  • Any issues arising during this process will be taken to the EOWG.
  • Entries must be managed using the form submission. No external PRs will be accepted.
  • All information provided by users and providers will be publicly available on GitHub.

Scope

This section is a rough draft in progress...

This Course List includes publicly-available digital accessibility courses in any language, free or paid.

Courses that will be included on this list are:

  • Specialization, training, and professional certification courses for individuals or organizations
  • Full graduate or undergraduate degree programs focused on digital accessibility
  • Individual courses that are part of a larger graduate or undergraduate program that can be taken without requiring the student to be enrolled in the program

Courses that will not be included in this list:

  • Courses that are less than 3 hours long
  • Courses that are available only to employees of a specific company, or enrolled students at a university
  • Conference sessions and presentations
  • Courses offered at a conference that cannot be taken without registering for the full conference
  • Submitted courses that go beyond the described scope will still be reviewed, and might be considered out of scope.

Courses that will be included on this list are courses addressing:

  • web content
  • digital documents available online
  • mobile applications
  • web browsers
  • media players
  • assistive technologies
  • authoring tools
  • test and evaluate accessibility, either through manual methodologies or assisted by evaluation tools
  • extended reality applications
  • managing accessibility throughout an organization
  • teaching web and digital accessibility, and advocating for web and digital accessibility

Submitted courses that go beyond the described scope will still be reviewed, and might be considered out of scope.

Courses review checklist

This section is a rough draft in progress...

This checklist provides information on how courses submitted to the Course List form are reviewed. The following points are checked:

  1. Web page linking to the correct course web page
    1. If possible, to a direct/dedicated web page
  2. Information provided on the form according to the information provided on the website:
    1. Course title *
    2. Name of the provider *
    3. Country or countries of the provider *
    4. Description *
    5. Type of resource *
    6. Audience *
    7. Level *
    8. Prerequisites (if any)
    9. Topics *
    10. WAI Curricula (if any)
    11. Language or languages *
    12. Format *
    13. Scheduling *
    14. Platforms (if any)
      1. If online/hybrid/blended confirm if the provider wish to add the platform
    15. Accessibility support (if any)
      1. Consistency according to the course format
    16. Length (if any)
    17. Cost *
    18. Reviews web page (if any)
      1. If it is users/former participants reviews
      2. If it concerns the course being submitted
      3. If it is unmoderated reviews
    19. Last updated (if any)
    20. Availability: from *
    21. Availability: until (if any)
  3. Scope - see [Scope section]
  4. JSON file with no errors

Timeline

  • Squirrel Review (requirements analysis): March 2021
  • Eagle Review (concept draft - structure and content): August 2021
  • Dragonfly Review (in progress draft - focus on specific questions): October 2021
  • Starfish Review (complete draft) (removed due to the thorough reviews already conducted and the need to bring forward the publish date)
  • Monkey Review (final draft - pre-publication review): April 2022
  • Butterfly Approval (approval to publish) : May 2022
  • Expansion of resources and maintenance support services: M18 - M36 (December 2023)

Open issues

  • How to distinguish individual x organization scenarios #302
  • How to handle data in other languages proposal:
    • Allow submitters to include data in any language - and (probably) indicate it, so that the listing uses the appropriate <span lang="@@">
  • Consult and collaborate with Teach Access that has a database of courses (Shawn has a pending invitation to talk with Kate Sonka. feel free to nudge Shawn to get that done.)
  • URI, IA, navigation proposal:
    • Under Accessibility Fundamentals, new page: w3.org/WAI/courses links to:
      • W3C course about page - change link from w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/foundations-course/ to w3.org/WAI/courses/w3c-accessibility-foundations/
      • submission form (now) - w3.org/WAI/courses/submission
      • course list (later) - w3.org/WAI/courses/list
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