About me

• Head of working group that focuses on Internet Accessibility for the Elderly and Disabled of the Spanish Association for Standardisation and Certification AENOR (GT3-SC-CTN139), also participates as a member of the CTN 133/GT 3.
• Accessibility Expert of aDeNu Group of the Artificial Intelligence Department of the Distance Learning University of Spain (UNED).
• Patron and Director of the Sidar - Universal Access Foundation

ResAP (2001)3 Resolution

• New technologies in education should be adapted to the needs of all learners, including those with special educational needs.
• Learners with disabilities should be provided with the assistive technology devices and the services they need, and these should be included in individualised education programmes.
• Training in the use of such devices is an essential component and should be provided for both learners and teachers.
• New assistive technologies should be used pro-actively to facilitate integrated education, enabling learners with disabilities to be educated in normal surroundings along with their peers.
• Since some learners, particularly those with learning difficulties, often have less access to assistive technology than others, special efforts should be made to ensure that they have access to appropriate technology and receive adequate instruction and support to use it.
• The development and use of new special educational hardware and software for the education of learners with disabilities should be encouraged.
• Given that all educational staff should be trained in the use of new technologies, in particular information and communication technologies, for educational purposes, due attention should be paid to the special educational needs of learners with disabilities in such training.

Paragraph 5.2 on Design for All: “Accessibility and usability of products and services should be ensured at the design stage. Therefore, the Design for All strategy should be incorporated in the curricula of all designers and engineers.”

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Article 9 - Accessibility

1. To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems, and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and in rural areas. These measures, which shall include the identification and elimination of obstacles and barriers to accessibility, shall apply to, inter alia:

1. Buildings, roads, transportation and other indoor and outdoor facilities, including schools, housing, medical facilities and workplaces;
2. Information, communications and other services, including electronic services and emergency services.

2. States Parties shall also take appropriate measures to:

1. Develop, promulgate and monitor the implementation of minimum standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services open or provided to the public;
2. Ensure that private entities that offer facilities and services which are open or provided to the public take into account all aspects of accessibility for persons with disabilities;
3. Provide training for stakeholders on accessibility issues facing persons with disabilities;
4. ...

2.1. Policies in Spain

Law 51/2003

10th Final disposition, the law states that the Spanish government had two years to develop accessibility curricula to be incorporated in all educational levels, including universities, to train professionals in the fields of built environment, buildings, infrastructures, transport, communications, telecommunications and services of the information society.

February 2006: White Book of Design for All at the University.

Define the essential curriculum content on Design for All to ensure that the related careers professionals can respond efficiently and effectively to accessibility that society demands.

Royal Decree 1393/2007

Among the general principles that should inspire the design of new titles, curricula should take into account that any professional activity must be: ... b) from the respect and promotion of human rights and the principles of universal accessibility and design for all in accordance with the provisions of disposal tenth of Law 51/2003, dated December 2, of equal opportunities, non discrimination and universal accessibility for disabled people must be included in the curriculum where appropriate, lessons related to these rights and principles.

SOLCOM Report

• The research results are not flattering in regard to compliance with Article 3.5 of the RD 1393/2007 by the universities.
• Of the 71 universities examined, only 7 have all disciplines of design and accessibility for all should. This means that only 10% of Spanish universities is fully compliant with the Article 3.5 of Royal Decree 1393/2007.
• 17 have any course related to the design for all or universal accessibility. This mean, the 24%.
• 47 does not have any. That is, 66% of Spanish universities fully violate Article 3.5 of Royal Decree 1393/2007.

Note: The study has been made ​​following an interpretation of Royal Decree moderately literal. Therefore, only analyzed artiquitectura university courses and engineering.

The Sidar Foundation position

The European regulations that aim to promote the inclusion of accessibility in the curriculum, considered that it should "be incorporated in the curricula of all designers and engineers"

In the field of education, both the regulations and the European plans, as well as those in each country, have focused on the need to facilitate that teachers know and use ICT in class, and on the knowledge of the special needs some students might have.

This is very far from the idea of accessibility as a benefit for all, the view of accessibility as a factor of interoperability and usability

Every day there are more applications that enable people who are not developers or designers to create content. Therefore, regulations should have been adapting to the evolution of the Web.

We need teach the teachers!

The barriers

1. The dissemination method: Maybe a course for a few group of lecturers.
2. The text (redaction) of the accessibility guidelines (even for students with computer training, the guidelines were cryptic).
3. The culture: The widespread idea that ICTs and accessibility are things of “technologists”, computer scientists.

The solutions

The EU4ALL framework

• Needs Assessment Service (NAS)
• Authoring support tools
• Service information on the accessibility of learning resources (RESACCINFO)
• Service adaptive management of learning resources (RESADAPT)
• Service feedback / comments (FEEDBACK)
• Information services on the accessibility of the courses (ACCINFO)

There is another/complementary solution: ¡to train educators in creating accessible content, so that they can be autonomous!.

The ALTER-NATIVA project.

The ALTER-NATIVA Kit

Teaching the teachers. The Sidar Foundation experience

2004: CNICE (today called INTEF)

A WCAG 1.0 presential course for K12 school teachers.

For the ALTER-NATIVA project

A 5 days course for lecturers about how create accessible learning objects:

• Exposing the users needs
​​
• Explaining the types of information or element’s accessibility (Not the criteria)
• Exercises for creating Accessible Learning Objects
• With the virtual Campus Sidar support

The user needs

• A video exposing some barriers and solutions
• 9 Personas: representing different types of users (including disabled users).

Accessibility elements (Not the criteria)

Exercises for creating Accessible Learning Objects

For the creation of the contents, they were given the Amaya editor, which facilitates editing MathML, and TinyMCE built in ATutor. They also used some of the tools to review, as the Colour Contrast Analyser, and they were able to include an audiovisual object with minimum accessibility.

Each student created one or more lessons, which were included in the associated course created by us, which served to show good and bad practices in the creation of mathematical content, called "The Pythagorean relationship." This learning object also helped us to demonstrate the use of SVG as an alternative to an applet created with GeoGebra, and references were given for them to practice converting from one format into another, after the course.

Conclusions

The main conclusion is that it is possible to teach educators to be autonomous in creating learning objects with a high degree of accessibility. But they are certain conditions. It is necessary:

• To facilitate the understanding of the barriers faced by persons with disabilities and the barriers anyone can find when using a technology or in a particular situation.
• To use simple and clear language, according to the level of expertise of the teachers.
• To explain the best practices and involvement in the educational field, avoiding reference to the complex language used in WCAG 2.0
• To facilitate applications and intuitive tools.
• To provide support to create alternatives that require knowledge or technologies that are not within reach, such as sign language interpretation.

But, for the moment, there is a limitation: in-depth review of accessibility

Accessibility is right not a privilege!

¡Thank you for your attention!

Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo
emmanuelle@sidar.org