Tag: Accessibility

Universal Design for Learning in Blackboard Courses

Posted on by digitaleducation
Woman in front of a bookcase, looking at her laptop screen and doing a happy or victorious gesture.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The Universal Design for Learning Framework aims to optimise learning by acknowledging the diversity of needs and preferences of learners.

The core principles of UDL are designing for multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. These are broken down into subcategories, considerations and suggestions.

Below you can find one suggestion for each principle, along with an example of how this could be implemented in a Blackboard course.

The WHY of learning – multiple means of engagement 

Example: ‘Offer feedback that emphasizes effort, improvement, and achieving a goal rather than on relative performance.’ (Consideration 8.5). 

The WHAT of learning – multiple means of representation 

Example: ‘Present key concepts beyond representation via text (e.g., an expository text or a math equation) with another or multiple formats (e.g., an illustration, dance/movement, diagram, table, model, video, comic strip, storyboard, photograph, animation, or physical or virtual manipulative).’ (Consideration 2.5). 

  • You can build complex resources with text, images, embedded videos and activities as well as quick knowledge check quizzes in Blackboard Documents.  

The HOW of learning – multiple means of action and expression 

Example: ‘The use of accessible materials and assistive and accessible technologies and tools strengthens opportunities for every learner to experience access, participation, and progress in the learning process.’ Consideration 4.2). 

Reflection

Take a look at the UDL Course Inventory created by Dr. Melissa Landers-Potts at the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia. How well does your unit meet these principles? Are there any areas for improvement? 

It’s worth looking at the UDL guidelines when you are designing or reviewing your course or learning activities, to ensure a good learning experience for students.

References

Improve your course’s accessibility using Blackboard Ally

Posted on by digitaleducation

The University is legally required to meet accessibility standards on its websites, intranets and mobile apps. Most of the standards are good practice, easily achieved and create an improved experience for everyone.

When creating materials for your course, ensure they are accessible and inclusive. The earlier you consider accessibility and inclusion, the easier this will be. If you are creating materials outside of Ultra, you can often check and improve their accessibility before you upload them, e.g. MS Office tools have built-in accessibility checkers.

When you finish an item or section of your course, you can check it for accessibility issues. You can easily find some of them automatically using Ally.

Ally is a tool integrated with Blackboard that can help you improve your course’s accessibility in a few ways:

  1. Score gauges to the top of Ultra Documents when you are editing a block and to the right of specific items within your course, usually files, indicate how accessible these are. Clicking on a gauge will show you details on how to improve the score for each piece of content.
  2. The Accessibility Report can show you an overview of your course’s accessibility and the issues that need to be fixed.
  3. Provides alternative formats for some elements of your course. Learn more about the alternative formats.

Screenshot of the accessibility score in Ally

 

 

 

 

 

Accessibility Report

To access the Accessibility Report, in your course main page click View course and Institution tools under Course Tools and select Accessibility Report.

This will bring up an overview of the types of files included in your course, a list of the issues and other information.

You can start fixing the easiest ones first, or the low scoring (most severe) first, or fix them by issue type.

It’s worth doing this section by section, as that way you can learn how to avoid issues or address them quicker as you go. If you wait until you have completed the course before checking for accessibility, the number of issues at that point may feel daunting and you may find that some of them could have been more easily addressed during course building rather than afterwards.

The accessibility report won’t find every issue in your course, but only some that can be found automatically. Others, like whether the language is simple and inclusive, or the headings meaningful are things you will need to look for yourself. The DEO Digital Accessibility and Inclusion pages have advice to help with this.

 

Screenshot of the course tools link in the menu.