How To Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
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The document discusses the importance of designing 508 compliant eLearning courses to ensure accessibility for learners with disabilities, including visual impairments and movement-related disorders. Key aspects include providing alt text for images, transcripts for audio, simplifying navigation, and selecting appropriate tools and LMS for accessibility. By addressing these considerations, learning experience designers can create universally accessible educational content.
How To Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 2. With eLearning, most learners can overcome the barriers of time and space and access learning electronically. But what about learners who do not have access? How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 3. Statistically, over 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, and between one to nine percent of the population have movement- related disorders.The traditional use of a website or eLearning course is often difficult or impossible for these specially-abled groups. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 4. As learning experience designers, it is essential that our eLearning courses are easily accessible for all learner groups. If you are going to make eLearning courses for all, it is important that you understand the big picture of 508 compliance. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 5. If you are planning to design a Section 508 compliant course, here are a few questions that need to be answered: How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 6. 1.Are all visual parts of your course accessible?
- 7. While designing and creating a 508-compliant course, it is important to provide text under images. Alt text ensures that the images are accessible to ocular learners.The screen reader will read the alt text aloud for the given images, which will help learners to know what images are included in your eLearning course. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 8. The rule of thumb is to provide an equivalent alt text or long description for every image, graphic, hyperlink, and button used in the course. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 9. 2. Is the audio accessible?
- 10. When designing a course, provide a text transcript for audio files. Using a text transcript makes information easily accessible to learners with hearing impairments. Always provide captioning and transcripts of the course audio and the course descriptions of any video. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 11. Closed captioning aids learners to read the audio portion of your video if they can’t hear it.This ensures the learner doesn’t miss any information that’s presented in the audio form in your eLearning course. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 12. All explanations of links added to your course must make sense when read out.Also, keep in mind to add instructional text both in the audio and the screen. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 13. 3.Are there ways to make the course navigation easier?
- 14. Course navigation determines the fate of an eLearning module and mobility issues can make handling the mouse difficult for some learners.Alternatively, make use of the keyboard. Use the keyboard for text entry and navigation. Build short-cuts to make it easier for the learner to remember how to perform a function. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 15. Using shortcut keys for navigation such as “Pause” and “Play” can reduce learner fatigue (Usually the “tab” key is used for navigation by specially-abled learners). How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 16. 4.What elements can be used?
- 17. When picking elements for your eLearning course, choose wisely. Sparingly make use of tables as they are difficult to interpret. Screen reader’s make it difficult for the users to locate a cell that is referred by the screen reader and mapping it with corresponding column headings and row names. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 18. Always summarize charts and graphs to help the learners know the content discussed.While building interactives, keep in mind that specially- abled learners require more time to complete the assigned tasks. Give the learners adequate time to complete these activities. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 19. 4.Which tools can be used?
- 20. Choosing the right tool that promotes accessibility can be a great challenge.Articulate Storyline,Adobe Captivate, and Lectora are all excellent choices for creating Section 508 courses as these tools use assistive technology. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 21. Storyline works best for creating alt tags for images and text.While Lectora provides better options for synchronized captioning for multimedia elements. It also works well to remove redundant navigation items in the screen reader. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 22. Avoid the use of Flash when designing accessible learning solutions, as screen readers have difficulty navigating Flash objects. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 23. How can the right Learning Management System help?
- 24. Picking up the right LMS is important as specially-abled learners take extra time to complete online assessments. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 25. Therefore, always pick up an LMS such as GnosisConnect LMS which allows you to extend the time to complete an assessment.This will ensure that you save both time and money by conducting a single assessment for different types of learners. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 26. Once you have figured out the answers to all these questions,you will be able to build a universally accessible and 508 compliant module. How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 27. To Read the Original Article Click Here: How to Design 508 Compliant eLearning Courses
- 28. We help organizations rapidly transform talent by focusing on Learning for Performance. A global, award-winning learning and training solutions company for almost 20 years, InfoPro provides performance improvement strategies, blended learning solutions, and managed training programs. One of the world’s leading providers of learning and training solutions. About InfoPro Learning For more information, visit www.infoprolearning.com