Through Another Set of Eyes - LMS Navigation
Imagine being in class, district uses Google Apps, Schoology and iPads, teachers had PD and are ready to support you. Resources are posted as PDFs with directions in each file. You are to load them to Notability, mark them up and submit. Now, imagine that you are blind.
These practices are common, districts moved to less accessible LMSs, or free platforms like Google Classroom, teachers follow the guidance of their district Tech Integrationists who know about cool tools and apps. Many of these suggestions and products offer no accessibility features to students who need to use assistive devices.
Millions of individuals in the United States are blind or visually impaired. Nearly 500,000 of these individuals are school age (5-18). The following video provides a perspective on daily life with a disability. Consider your current teaching materials as they relate to accessibility. As you view, think about the content as it relates to your current role and the assignments you ask students to complete.
This short video shows a student trying to use a Learning Management System (LMS) through the use of a screen reader.
This is a major reason why we, at Intermediate District 287, use Moodle. We can customize the LMS to reduce the number of steps it takes to get to content. Many vendors claim to have an accessible tool, but as you can see from the video above, it is functionally broken and inaccessible. We are always open to feedback to how we can improve our tool. If you are in a district supporting learners with another LMS there are a few suggestions:
- Teachers can put their unit content into folders which cuts down on the number of links on the main course page;
- Move the current folder to the top of the course for faster access to the content currently needed;
- Teachers should paste content into the HTML editor instead of using files;
- Use Alt Text only for images conveying information, the rest should receive null tags.
- Hide/Remove documents that are no longer needed
- Naming conventions for folders and files that are used (tag with dates or numbers)
- Consistency (LMS, file structure. If a student is taking 6-7 courses in a day and each teacher has a different organization style then students have to learn that many ways to navigate. Let's try to keep it to one.)
- Context to links and resources so someone knows what they are supposed to do when they get to a page. Even if your LMS course is just for supplemental resources. Do students have to figure out teacher intent to know what to do with resources? It cannot just be a list of items.
- Take excerpts of articles instead of pointing students to the primary source if the primary source is not necessary (research/journal articles)
(ex. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1456409/ [Actual link posted in a 7th grade Science course with no additional context in the LMS, how many students will actually read this? Is it required? Be realistic.) - Make file names more descriptive
- Do webquests take more time to access materials than engaging with the materials?
(ex. http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/stop7.htm) - Get PD on accessibility training
- Plan ahead. Even if something is posted for support staff a week in advance, there are multiple courses and the workload for different types of documents is different (do they need cleanup? Braille? Reformating? Alt tags? Headers?) Some items require more planning and lead time.
- Push your IT Department, Curriculum Directors and Tech Integration Specialists to perform accessibility reviews when selecting tools that don't just involve asking the vendor if their tool is accessible. Test them. Ask for updates to make tools accessible. Find out others who use the tools and leverage that against the vendors. There is power in numbers.
Is this just about the LMS or Digital Curriculum in general?
Karen Berger a BVI specialist from Intermediate District 287 has this to say:
For my students, it makes no sense that I work to increase access to the LMS because they can't access most of the materials on there. But then I talk to her case manager, and she tells me that lots other special ed kids she works with (who have perfectly normal vision) struggle with the organization of the LMS. Every teacher has a different type of organizational system for their materials.
So maybe we can't tell the Schoology Corp to rewrite Schoology to help, but I know that if classroom teachers got together and developed a consistent organizational plan as to how to organize their curriculum files, that would help a lot of kids.
Kids with organizational difficulties struggle with a poorly designed website. I believe that there is an additional "cognitive load and effort" which needs to be expended to do what used to be simple paper and pencil tasks. This will be harder for lots of kids. Kids with reading disabilities may need to use text that can be read with a text reader; most of the materials I see posted would not be accessible. Kids with physical challenges might find it hard to use text boxes: I believe text boxes are generally harder for all to use. There are Physically or Otherwise Health Impaired (POHI) kids who can see the LMS perfectly fine, but they might use special input devices which require special training. I struggle with the teacher made videos, and I am also aware that DHH kids also have special needs regarding the videos.
This is another example of why good design, in general, is good for all student. As stated elsewhere in this module, we want students to spend time on their learning materials, not trying to access them.
This page on LMS Navigation by Jon Fila at Intermediate District 287 is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. Based on a work from Leading Edge partners: @One, iNACOL