Call for Participation in Accessible Online Learning Community Group
Posted on:The Accessible Online Learning Community Group has been launched:
Accessibility is often provided through accommodations. Schools are legally obligated to provide accommodations to enrolled students with identified disabilities, based on their needs—sign language interpreters in lectures for deaf students, digital copies of textbooks for students who are blind or have reading difficulties, extended time on exams for students who need more time due to cognitive or physical disabilities.
With online learning, the obligations are less clear—for example, with MOOCs, where students around the world are taking courses but are not enrolled at the sponsoring school or organization. Also, accommodations are not well established—sign language interpreters and note takers are typically accommodations for the physical classroom. How does an organization ensure they are meeting obligations and giving online students the support they need participate fully and to be successful?
Providers of online learning are best off delivering courses that are accessible out-of-the-box, without the need for special accommodations. And many of the features that provide an accessible experience for people with disabilities benefit all learners. For example, lecture transcripts are an excellent tool for study and review. However, without deliberate attention to the technologies, standards, and guidelines that comprise the Web Platform, accessibility may be difficult to achieve, and learners with disabilities may be left behind.
The activities of the Accessible Online Learning W3C Community Group take place at the intersection of accessibility and online learning. We focus on reviewing current W3C resources and technologies to ensure the requirements for accessible online learning experiences are considered. We also identify areas where additional resources and technologies are needed to ensure full participation of people with disabilities in online learning experiences.
In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.
This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2015-04-10 by Sarah Horton. The following people supported its creation: Sarah Horton, Trisha Salas, Armony ALTINIER, Sarven Capadisli, Matt Obee, Dónal Fitzpatrick. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.
The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.
We invite you to share news of this new group in social media and other channels.
If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org
Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team
I am employed as Professor of Learning, Equity, Access and Participation at Central Queensland University and also principal chief investigator of a national funded learning and teaching project focusing on improving access to learning management systems as well as a special equity funded project designed to improve the usability and accessibility of online materials. I would be interested in joining the group as a means of dissemination outcomes from our research and also involving other universities and education providers in the project. However neither the link to the W3C page to set up a W3C account nor the link to joining the group are working. Can you please send the correct links to me via email?
Many Thanks
Denise
Hello Professor Wood,
Here is the account request form:
https://www.w3.org/accounts/request
Here is the link to join the group:
https://www.w3.org/community/accesslearn/join
It may be that there were temporary outages; sorry for that inconvenience. If, on the other hand, you came upon other links than these and those links did not work, please let me know what they were and I’ll hunt around and fix them.
Thank you,
Ian Jacobs
Hi, Ian. The link on the page to get a W3C account appears to be broken. It points to this URL:
https://www.w3.org/community/account/request
Is there an updated community? This article is really old.