Inclusion of students with disabilities in online learning environments

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Permalink Reply by Karen Fasimpaur on August 1, 2008 at 3:21pm

You might check that your web site or online learning environment meets accessibility guidelines. (This will ensure that tools that disabled people use, like screen readers, work.) Here are some resources on this:

http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/Overview.html

http://www.csun.edu/accessibility/checkpoints.html

http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/

Hope this is useful.

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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Ahlers-Mack on August 6, 2008 at 2:54am

Thank you so much for these sites!

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Permalink Reply by Sharo Dickerson on July 12, 2010 at 8:13pm

Thank you for these resources as well, Karen. I am a Virtual School Developer and I find this type of information useful as a reference for my online teachers and course developers.

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Permalink Reply by Christy Tucker on August 1, 2008 at 9:03pm

Visually impaired students will probably use a screen reader. You can find a number of resources available for making content accessible to screen readers. You don't have to provide an audio equivalent for everything as long as your students have the right software to read it to them. JAWS is a common screen reader, but even Firefox add-ons like Click Speak and Accesibar can make a big difference in an LMS like Moodle. Virtual worlds like Second Life are harder, partly because everything has to be accessible by keyboard. Linden Labs does have some documentation of their accessibility features.

For students with hearing impairments, provide a text equivalent for any audio. If you have video, provide real-time captions if you can and a transcript if you can't. Second Life should actually work fine for someone with a hearing impairment as long as you use text chat instead of voice.

WebAIM has a wealth of resources on general web accessibility. I recommend starting with their Intro to Web Accessibility. Ira Socol's SpeEdChange blog has lots of ideas about accessibility specifically in education.

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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Ahlers-Mack on August 6, 2008 at 2:54am

Thank you so much for these sites!

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Permalink Reply by Sharo Dickerson on July 12, 2010 at 8:19pm

Thank you, Christy, for sharing this as well! I surely am interested to know more about Click Speak since Ysleta Virtual School will be using Moodle as our Learning Management System. I have not tried Accesibar, but will surely be trying this as well.

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on August 2, 2008 at 10:31am

Hi Lorraine,
You might want to check out Karen Janowski's blog
http://teachingeverystudent.blogspot.com/

She's an expert on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and using technology to offer access to all kids, and her blog is a wealth of resources and ideas. She's a member here too!
http://www.classroom20.com/profile/KarenJ

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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Ahlers-Mack on August 6, 2008 at 2:55am

Thank you so much for these sites!

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Permalink Reply by Amanda Kenuam on April 21, 2010 at 7:58am

check out www.mangomon.com

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