Why You Should Consider Accessibility When Creating eLearning
Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, and environments for people with disabilities. For digital content, you must frequently design for limitations relating to vision, hearing, mobility, or cognition. Ensuring that eLearning is accessible is required, in some situations, by law. For example, if training is created for a federal agency, it’s covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Most states have similar accessibility requirements for training designed for them. Whether the ADA applies to commercial businesses is a bit more nuanced depending on multiple factors such as the business’s location and type of customer.
Broadly speaking regulations, federal laws, state laws, and court rulings have established that if digital content is provided to people without disabilities in federal, educational, or commercial contexts, that same information must be available to people with disabilities.
Beyond the law, as the CEO of a firm that has helped several organizations ensure that their online training is available to people with disabilities, I have found that there is another “why.” Inclusive design of learning will allow you to get the best out of the talent already in your organization and get the best talent for your organization by expanding the potential labor pool to include people with disabilities.
In her book, Inclusion Branding: Revealing Secrets to Maximize ROI, Debra Ruh states the talents of people with disabilities are historically underutilized by society. With technology significantly expanding the capability of people with disabilities to contribute to the workforce, this community represents an untapped source of productive, reliable talent in a time that finding resources is critical but increasingly challenging.
“Employing a diverse workforce inclusive of persons with disabilities creates benefits in many ways: enhanced reputation, reduction in risk, innovation opportunities, and productivity gains. And most importantly, it nurtures a loyal, productive, and innovative workforce.” – Debra Ruh.
Common Reasons That Organizations Do Not Create Accessible Learning
1. None Of Our Students Need Accessibility Features
Frequently, when we suggest to a client that they should consider accessibility when developing their training, we are told, “The people whom we are creating this training for cannot have a disability. So, we will never need to have a disabled person take the training.”
When you are considering investing in developing accessible training, you may think that the employees at my organization are not disabled. Something to remember is that people are not required to disclose that they have a disability. Furthermore, not all disabilities are apparent. For instance, it is difficult to tell at a glance whether someone has dyslexia or is hard of hearing.
In the Center for Talent Innovation’s “Disabilities and Inclusion” study, they discovered that a full 30% of the professional workforce fits the current federal definition of having a disability — and the majority are keeping that status a secret.
Employees and their supervisors frequently do not think of some physical limitations as disabilities. Do you have an employee that is nearsighted? That employee might find the ability to enlarge fonts useful. Have an employee that works outside? Graphics and text that meet the contrast ratio will help them see the training you built in that challenging situation. Building in accessibility features in your training can make the training useful for employees with physical or situational limitations.
Also, consider that one of your team members may have a temporary disability. A broken arm, a detached retina—temporary issues but issues that need accommodation.
Creating accessible training allows all your employees to learn from training and perform their job to their full potential. It also creates opportunities for disabled employees and job applicants.
2. We Don’t Know How To Create Accessible eLearning
Making your first course accessible can be a significant lift. Learn and get help. Kevin Gumienny, in his authoritative guide The Training Manager’s Guide to Accessible Elearning offers resources and guidance for both purchasing and creating training for accessibility novices.
Industry organizations such as the Industry Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), as well as private companies, offer accessibility training and certification for your team.
While you are bringing your team up to speed, consider hiring experienced consultants to help you design, develop and test your training for accessibility. It is often the most efficient method to create accessible training. A good consultant will mentor your team on how to create accessible training in the future.
3. It Costs Too Much And Takes Too Long
An argument that is frequently made against creating accessible training is that it increases the upfront costs and extends the training creating time. Yes, creating accessible training will cost a bit more and take a bit longer up front. However, it is far less expensive to implement accessibility early in the process, whether you are buying or creating training. It is far easier to choose to purchase training that is already accessible than to make training accessible after purchase.
Similarly, building accessibility into the design requirements and considering it during the choice of development tools and the process will significantly reduce the cost of creating accessible content.
If you start thinking about accessibility only during the testing phase of the project, it can result in significant delays. Remediating an inaccessible course, especially under legal pressure, can often cost as much as creating an accessible course in the first place.
If training needs to be made accessible, it is always cheaper to build accessibility into the specification and design process rather than retrofit inaccessible training.
4. It Limits Functionality; It Makes Our eLearning Boring
Yes, creating accessible eLearning means accepting limitations on design. You might have to choose a high contrast color palette to accommodate people with vision issues. Certain interactions that are available in your rapid eLearning tool such as click-and-drag activities may not pass muster.
When considering those decisions remember business goals and effectiveness should drive your training. Designing training so that it is available to all users, including those with disabilities, is essential if your business goal is to be inclusive and reach every worker in your organization. Your focus shouldn’t be on flashy programming or design, but on what research shows makes learning effective (although, to be fair, shouldn’t that be the approach of all training?).
Accessibility constraints do not have to lead to boring training. You can create training within constraints that is engaging and meets business goals.
5. We Don’t Have The Tools
If you use rapid authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline® or Trivantis Lectora® to create eLearning you have a bit less control over accessibility. The coding to create slick interactions is not under your control. Fortunately, tool providers have started to address accessibility issues and made it easier to create accessible eLearning.
If you understand the accessibility features of the tool as well as tool limitations, you can create a more accessible course. The training created with certain rapid development tools may not be perfectly accessible. However, your organization can still see benefits in higher usability and more inclusiveness.
Creating accessible eLearning is no different from achieving any other organizational objective. It requires forethought and investments of time and money. Achieving accessibility involves compromise between objectives such as design and speed. However, the return of an inclusive approach is high. Your training will be more useful for a larger percentage of your team members. Besides, training that meets generally accepted accessibility requirements can open up new markets for your company. We strongly believe that the effort involved in creating accessible training is worth the investment of money, the cost of training employees as well as the additional time it takes to create accessible training.