Access Learn Update, August 2017

It’s been a while since our last post, and since then we’ve welcomed a few new members to the group. So it’s time we shared an update of what we’ve been doing.

As a reminder, AccessLearn’s initial focus has been to:

1. identify information gaps that exist in the intersection of accessibility and online learning,
2. review the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) website to understand how well it provides information that could address those knowledge gaps
3. based on the first two steps, make recommendations for improving the WAI site’s coverage of accessibility applied to online learning.

We’ve now completed Steps 1 and 2, and created some draft recommendations for addressing the knowledge gaps. These recommendations vary from providing new content, adding examples that are relevant to online learning, to better signposting of existing content.

The next step is for the AccessLearn Community Group to review and comment on these recommendations, before we shape them into a draft report to share with W3C’s Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG).

So, we invite all group members to review the recommended actions, and add your comments. You can do so by adding comments directly in the Google Sheet, or via the group email list.

If you’d prefer to wait until the recommendations are formulated into a more readable report, that’s okay. We plan to circulate that in early September.

The group chairs, Mary and Dave, will be presenting AccessLearn’s work at the Accessing Higher Ground conference in Colorado in November this year. We’ll also be using the opportunity to gather feedback on what the group should focus on next. If you plan to attend AHG, we look forward to seeing you there!