Inclusive learning

Unfortunately, easily or even fully accessible digital products are not used anywhere near as widely as they should be in order to support and include in all user groups equally. Accessibility is the latest buzzword. This means making media equally accessible and usable for every individual, regardless of any restriction they may live with. It means designing websites, technologies and tools so that people with disabilities can identify, understand, navigate and interact with content on the web. A large group of users live with restrictions. In Germany alone, almost 10% of the population is severely disabled, about 350,000 are visually impaired, about 80,000 people are deaf and about 16 million are hard of hearing. Find out how to make your digital learning experiences as accessible as possible and provide all learners with an equally engaging learning experience.

The term “accessibility” was originally coined by the construction industry. Everyone knows that it is about removing all the obstacles that would make access difficult for people with primary physical disabilities, or even prohibit access altogether. Digital accessibility means the same thing, but in this case with regard to the virtual space. Technical as well as physical barriers must be removed and content made accessible in order to enable unrestricted access to digital products. In practical terms, this means ensuring that every individual can run, see, understand and create content on the Internet on any device, irrespective of potential obstacles such as impaired hearing or sight, cognitive or motor impairments and technical, social, cultural or environmental barriers.

The following statistics illustrate the urgency of the need to provide access for all:

In this context, it is important to remember that only 4% of the disabilities mentioned here are hereditary. Most of them are caused by illness, accidents or old age, when people gradually find it increasingly difficult to hear and see. Attention also needs to be given to people with temporary disabilities. Creating an inclusive eLearning program therefore means responding not only to any current needs, but also taking preventive action and thus making training products accessible to all. Accessible learning programs help provide people with disabilities with the same individualized learning experience. This is a goal for society as a whole, and chemmedia AG is helping to achieve it through the development of Knowledgeworker Create authoring software, which enables teachers and trainers to produce accessible online courses.

Despite continuous improvements and the introduction of self-service portals, many regulatory issues still cannot be dealt with digitally. The German Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz; OZG) now aims to take further steps forward in this context by requiring the public sector to offer administrative services via appropriate online portals by the end of 2022. Pursuant to the OZG, the German Accessible Information Technology Ordinance (Barrierefreie-Informationstechnik-Verordnung; BITV) and the European Accessibility Act (EAA), all websites must be accessible to a broad potential target group.

The laws and guidelines apply to 

• public web applications,
• internal web applications (intranet),
• administrative applications, and
• documents of official bodies.

Official bodies are all those organizations that are subject to European law on public procurement. These include the federal government, the federal states, municipalities, schools and colleges (including their digital learning programs), kindergartens,  day care centers and legal entities under public and private law (to the extent that they undertake tasks of a non-commercial nature in the general interest, such as in the operation of health insurance funds or social security institutions).

The BITV is based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)—the international standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C draws up a variety of requirements that web developers can use for guidance. At the heart of this are the following four principles:

Many people with restricted ability depend on assistive technologies to be able to consume of digital media, and these in turn make certain demands on websites to be “readable”. These include:

There are simple adjustments you can make to implement the above principles of legibility, usability, comprehensibility and robustness. When designing accessible online courses, you are primarily concerned with ensuring legibility and comprehensibility. Usability and robustness can largely be guaranteed by selecting accessibility software.