In a few minutes I will be going to a PBS broadcast covering accessibility of online courses. The program is being produced by the University of Maryland University College and sponsored at our campus by a couple of departments involved with online education. There has been a lot of talk about web accessibility and with a move toward standards-based designs; it has become much easier to open the online doors to those with disabilities.

The program is structured in three parts:

• Realities: which explains problems that students with disabilities commonly encounter in online courses as well as problems faculty and staff encounter in trying to help them
• Challenges: discussing complex barriers to online accessibility that faculty and staff working together will be unable to resolve without outside intervention
• Progress: which focuses on reframing accessibility so that the focus for faculty and staff is on the environment rather than on individual students.

The members of the panel are:

Sue Kroeger directs the Disability Resource Center at the University of Arizona, which serves over 1300 students with disabilities. She is a past president of the Association on Higher Education And Disability and is well known for her presentations on the the advantages of Universal Design and has made numerous presentations on the advantages of Universal Design. She has been principal investigator for several federal grants and has consulted nationally and internationally.

Brenda Matthis is an assistant professor of technology at Lesley University, where she specializes in technology and special needs and in emerging technologies. Her professional background is in software design and analysis; she most recently worked with the Center for Applied Special Technology, where she served as Lead Researcher for the Bobby accessibility repair tool.

Kristine Neuber is the assistive technology and web accessibility coordinator for George Mason University. She provides assistive technology screening, training and support for all university students and employees. She has extensive experience in building support for large-scale web accessibility initiatives and has partnered with WebAIM in developing institutional models and plans for accessibility.

John Slatin directs the Accessibility Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been involved in accessibility issues since 1985 and currently chairs a statewide initiative on accessible electronic government services in Texas. He is the author (with Sharron Rush) of Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone.

Download the materials in advance.

Update

Well, the material covered was really nothing ground breaking and most of the talk was the normal academia lingo (…committee this and administration that…). However there were a couple of points regarding online accessibility that stuck with me and I will take a couple of days to read up on before I make an entry here.