AccessLearn Introductory Survey results— 1. Standards and guidelines

Hi all

Over the course of this week, I’ll be sharing findings from the initial survey, for reflection and discussion, and as something to frame group discussion and activity moving forward. We’ll also make an anonymised version of the dataset available to group members.

In the first part of the survey, we wanted to find out about people’s perceptions of current W3C and non-W3C accessibility standards and their applicability to online learning. This is core to the group, as it’s a W3C Community Group, so ultimately our work needs to contribute in some way to W3C’s standardisation activity.

#1. Extent to which current W3C Accessibility standards support creation and evaluation of accessible online learning

Positive responses (either ’strongly agree’ or ‘agree’) to the statement that the following W3C standards support the creation an evaluation of accessible online learning platforms and resources

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 89.70% n=61
WAI-ARIA 70.15% n= 47
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 47.76% n= 32
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG) 33.84% n= 22

Some comments:
* WCAG is widely recognised as having a very positive impact in supporting accessible online learning. WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is also positively rated, but the impact of ATAG and UAAG is less confidently expressed.
* WCAG strongly appears to be the most well-known. Several of the supporting comments make reference to its legal significance.
* Several comments indicated a limited, or lack of, awareness of the other sets of W3C guidelines/specifications, which indicates a less clear picture of W3C WAI’s components of accessibility (to ensure accessible content, we also need accessible content creation tools and browsing technology, including assistive technology, that can effectively present this content). More on the Web Accessibility Initiative's Essential Components of Accessibility at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/components.php)

Method:
* For each of the four guidelines/specifications listed, participants were asked to rate their agreement with the statement: The following W3C accessibility guidelines and specifications support the creation an evaluation of accessible online learning platforms and resources?
* Participants recorded their answers using a 5 point Likert-type scale, and optionally with free text comments 
* There were 68 responses (though not all responses gave a rating to each standard)


#2 Important non-W3C standards for influencing online learning accessibility

Most commonly cited non-W3C standard of importance
* Section 508 (32%, n=16)
* CAST’s Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (20%, n=10)
* IMS accessibility specifications (n=6, 12%)
* Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (n=4, 8%)
* TEACH Act (proposed) (n=4, 8%)
* PDF/UA (n=3, 6%)
* Section 504 (n=2, 4%)
Below this group was a long tail of standards that received only one response. These included examples of technical specifications, accessibility guidelines, guidelines on curriculum design, disability rights legislation and institution-specific guidelines. 

Some comments:
* The IMS accessibility specifications category included respondents who mentioned IMS specifications such as ACCMD, ACCLIP, APIP and AccessForAll. One respondent explicitly stated IMS guidelines were not current, but it’s possible this referred to IMS’ accessible learning applications guidelines (http://www.imsglobal.org/accessibility/accessiblevers/) published in 2004 and not updated since. The low score of IMS work is interesting, given its complementary role to W3C’s work.
* Legislation is cited as influential, although in most cases, legislation provides a general driver for “doing something”, without the technical detail of what is and is not acceptable
* Process standards such as the UK’s BS8878 (1 response) were not commonly cited as being influential.

Method:
* Participants were asked "What are the most important non-W3C accessibility standards and guidelines that currently influence online learning? Please list as many as you can think of, in order of importance.”
* Participants recorded their answers as free text.
* There were 50 responses.

More to come tomorrow, but comments on these initial findings are welcome!

Dave


David Sloan

UX Research Lead
The Paciello Group
dsloan@paciellogroup.com

Received on Monday, 27 July 2015 09:14:56 UTC