AccessLearn Update January 2017

Dear AccessLearn Community Group,

Happy New Year!  As your co-chairs, Dave and I would like to start the new year with a review of the work our group has conducted to date — and a proposal for next steps.

Since starting in the Spring of 2015, Access Learn has conducted the following work:

  *   A call for participation, resulting in 86 participants<https://www.w3..org/community/accesslearn/participants>
  *   Two Surveys: An Initial AccessLearn Survey<https://www.w3.org/community/accesslearn/wiki/Initial_AccessLearn_Survey> identified topics and key challenges (technical, organisational, other) in creating accessible online learning experiences. A subsequent survey identified two work streams.
  *   Workstream 1: Began an analysis of existing WAI documents and a list to identify what exists, what needs additional information, and what is lacking in guidance or resources focused on accessibility and online learning.
  *   Workstream 2: Formed a 21 item list of accessibility information gaps that exist in the online learning community and associated stakeholders.

While neither workstream was fully completed, Dave and I propose bringing the work streams back together for the entire group to move forward. We have gathered detail from 2 documents that came out of each workstream to form a combined document:

W3C Resources and Gaps Related to Online Learning
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHynDV-umVHF3NcKkCIuSL12lzZCj-2qS4gjmLtsXto/edit?usp=sharing

In this new document, we invite each of you to contribute as follows:

  1.  Add to "W3C Resources Related to Online Learning” This first sheet is designed to list W3C WAI resources, all available under the domain www.w3c.org, with relevance to online learning. We invite you to add to this list where you know of a W3C resource relevant to online learning that is not listed. Please only add resources on the w3c domain.  Due to the sheer number of techniques related to each WCAG guideline, we did not attempt to list them, but if there is a specific technique you want to add, please do.

  2.  “Information Gaps,” is the second sheet, where we invite you to read the list of gaps Workstream 2 identified, and, for each Information Gap Item listed, identify if the information gap fits into one of these scenarios (a droplist is provided in the sheet)

  *   Information is not present on the WAI web siteInformation is hard to find
  *   Information is hard to find
  *   Information is hard to apply to online learning
  *   Information is hard to find and hard to apply

AND

  *   If the information is present on WAI, provide a link to that information using the list of W3C WAI resources on the first sheet.

An Additional Comments field is also provided for your use.

We have filled in a field to get us started and hope this document is understandable to you. If not, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Please join our effort by contributing to this combined document. Our goal is to have your contributions by 1 March 2017, when we plan to check in again and send a progress update. Thank you so much for your time!

Warm Regards,
Mary Ziegler and David Sloan

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Mary J. Ziegler
Program Manager for Online Accessibility
MIT Office of Digital Learning
Cambridge MA 02139
Email maryz@mit.edu<mailto:maryz@mit.edu>
Phone 617-258-9328