Check Work

Checking for accessibility, PDF accessibility checker, MS Office checker,  Usability testing

Check for Usability and Accessibility

Even if you have followed the accessibility checklist it can be useful to check your course materials for accessibility and usability. With Adobe Acrobat Professional it is possible to check PDFs for accessibility. MS Office have produced a set of accessibility checker rules to go through manually as well as an automated accessibility checker in MS Office 2010. Any HTML used can be checked with a validation tool.  Online materials can meet all accessibility requirements but still be difficult and frustrating for users due to poor usability. Wherever possible do user testing on new eLearning courses before they are made available to students.

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Checking for accessibility

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PDF Accessibility Checker

PDFs can be made accessible with Acrobat Professional. If you do not own Acrobat Professional, one way to do a quick accessibility check is to try the document with the “Read Out Loud” feature in Acrobat Reader, which can be found under View > Read Out Loud > Activate Read Out Loud , for further details see WebAim's Read Out Loud article. If the document will not “Read out Loud” it may be that the document language has not been specified (see Language page) or that the text is actually an image. Optical Character Recognition can be done with tools such as Omnipage.

If you have Acrobat Pro or Acrobat X you can also:

  • use Quick Check (WebAim do not recommend this as it can be too simplistic) to check for document structure tags, searchable text, and appropriate security settings for accessibility
  • use Full Check to perform a more thorough check for many characteristics of accessible PDF files, such as the use of fonts that can be mapped reliably to Unicode text
  • use Reflow view to quickly check reading order
  • Save the document as accessible text, and then read the saved text file in a word processing application to experience the document as it will be perceived by readers who use a Braille printer
  • use the TouchUp Reading Order tool, Tags tab, and Content tab to examine the structure, reading order, and contents of a PDF file in detail
  • use Forms Editing mode to examine the Tab order and form field properties of interactive PDF forms

For explanations of these features see the WebAim PDF tutorial or Adobe's slide show with audio on Assessing PDF files for accessibility.

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MS Office Accessibility Checker

Microsoft Office 2010 features an “Accessibility checker” for Excel, Word and PowerPoint “to help you identify and resolve accessibility issues in your files”. The checker displays Warnings, Errors and Tips in a task pane which is linked to the corresponding areas within the document. even if you do not have access to Office 2010, go through their “Accessibility Checker Rules” document as a manual, rather than automated, accessibility check.

Error rules include:

  • All objects have alternative text
  • All (long) Word documents use styles to provide structure
  • Tables specify column header information

Warning rules include:

  • Excel Sheet tabs have non-default names
  • Tables don't use blank cells for formatting
  • Hyperlink text is meaningful

Tips include:

  • Closed captions are included for inserted audio and video
  • The reading order of a PowerPoint slide should be logical
  • All headings follow a logical order

Office 2010 users should visit the Accessibility in Microsoft Office 2010 webpages for more information and help. A video demonstration of the PowerPoint Accessibility Checker is also available.

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Usability testing

It can be relatively simple to make eLearning resource accessible using a checklist, but this alone can be quite useless if the resource is difficult to use or if tasks are poorly explained. In the past usability was connected purely with the user interface or navigation system within an e-learning tool. Many now consider the term incomplete without considering “pedagogical usability”. Cooper at al (2007) state that “usability, in an e-learning context, can be defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which users can achieve specified learning (or learning related) goals in a particular environment or with a particular tool or learning resource” and that “accessibility and usability impact directly on the pedagogical effectiveness of elearning systems or resources for all learners, but particularly for disabled learners”. Silius et al (2003) state that “The evaluation of pedagogical usability should moreover always be undertaken in relation to selected pedagogical objectives and the value added anticipated”.

Lanzilotti et al (2006) have developed an evaluation methodology, called “eLSE” (e-Learning Systematic Evaluation). The evaluation process is organised into a preparatory phase and an execution phase. In the preparatory phase, a number of decisions must be taken and a specific set of Abstract Tasks (ATs) created. ATs guide the evaluator‘s activities by describing which elements of the application to look for, and which actions the evaluators must perform in order to analyse such elements. ATs indicate how to define the Concrete Tasks (CTs), i.e. the actual tasks that users are required to perform during the test. When creating “Abstract Tasks” it must be remembered that a variety of disabled users (e.g. dyslexic, blind, partially sighted, deaf etc.) will also need to complete these and thus some of the testing should involve using appropriate assistive technology. For more on usability testing in the e-learning context see Jeffels, P. (2011).

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