Provocations: When Would be a Good Time?
“Throughout the world, many [governments and non-governmental] organizations–universities, schools, and private companies–are recognizing that accessibility is a moral and business imperative; many are adopting policies aimed at making Web resources accessible to the more than six hundred million people with disabilities worldwide.” (2002, Rush and Slatin)
Recognizing something is a moral imperative … adopting policies … doing the work… let’s see how far we’ve come.
Web 1.0 and 2.0
- In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web.
- 1994 – 1996 the UK’s Open University and NKI in Norway begin experimenting with delivering distance education through in-house-designed learning management systems (LMS).
- 1997 corporate vendors Blackboard and Saba develop enterprise-level LMS for the post-secondary sector.
- 1999 Web Accessibility Initiative issues the first Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0
- By 2005, the population of Internet users reaches 1 billion and the era of Web 2.0 begins. User-generated content, social media, collaborative workspaces, sharing platforms, and e-learning in K-12 and post-secondary are becoming commonplace and well-researched.
- 2008 WCAG 2.0 is released to offer accessibility guidance and set standards for the digital content proliferating on sharing platforms and in learning communities. It is referenced in legislation and policies guiding education practices around the world.
Wishing on Accessibility Fairies
2006, Jane Seale publishes E-Learning and Disability in Higher Education: Accessibility Research and Practice the first of her many major contributions to the field of digital accessibility in post-secondary education.
In it she cites Nicole Kipar’s 2005 lament that with all the technological advancements meant to make education more accessible, some of the most commonly used learning tech of the day – discussion boards – were not meaningfully usable by learners using screen readers.
Perhaps there is a magic solution for this problem that we haven’t encountered yet, but we fear that until the Fairy of Learning Technology raises her magic wand to sprinkle accessibility dust all over the [school], our students who use screen readers will not be able to take part in online discussion. Surely, if this is the case, instead of widening participation and enhancing accessibility – we are narrowing it.
(Nicole Kipar, ALT-N Newsletter, July 2005) Cited in the introduction to E-Learning and Disability in Higher Education: Accessibility Research and Practice (Seale, 2006)
Progress: a lot has changed in the past 20 years.
- 2004 Google goes public and revolutionizes search.
- 2005 Google Maps comes on line, changing the way we trip plan, and perceive our routes and physical environments.
- 2005 YouTube posts its first video.
- 2007 Apple releases the iPhone, fundamentally changing the way we use phones. (By 2017, Face ID normalizes handheld biometric authentication. Today, some accessibility features built into this mainstream device outshine purpose-built assistive tech.)
- 2014 the Curiosity Mars Rover discovers water under the crust of the surface of Mars.
- 2015 two separate companies successfully land reusable rockets, massively reducing the cost of (speculative) commercial space travel.
- 2022 Chat GPT sends shockwaves through the Academy, polarizing those who see AI as a “cheating” technology and those excited by the potential applications.
Progress: some things stay the same.
- 2024 learners who use screen readers are still marginalized in, or outright excluded from, social learning opportunities in LMS forums and discussion tools that still don’t work with their assistive tech. The market has not found solutions in 20 years and the field of Education hasn’t pushed.
When will we normalize digital accessibility practices?
In the introduction to her 2006 book, Seale writes:
At this point in time [2006], most practitioners in higher education know that they should make e-learning accessible to students with disabilities. Very few practitioners however, know exactly how to make e-learning accessible. This is despite the fact that tens, if not hundreds of accessibility related ‘tools’ exist supposedly to assist practitioners in the development of accessible e-learning material….
Seale, 2006
And despite decades of research, legislation, litigation, ICT design revolutions, and websites, tutorials and books aimed at educators, many educators and learners don’t know what makes something digitally accessible.
It’s hard to launch a campaign to normalize something that most people don’t understand.
Will this generation get taught the literacy skills behind digitally accessible knowledge sharing?
We still teach literacy and digital literacy, as if only able-bodied people communicate with able-bodied people.
The future of an accessible web will continue to depend on artful forms of writing even as internet traffic is consumed by non-text content. We should teach students to approach digital accessibility as a literate practice… We don’t usually discuss digital accessibility in these terms: literacy, writing, rhetoric, style… We need to keep in mind that the web becomes legible for everyone principally through humanistic and rhetorical acts of reading and writing texts
