Thomas J. Tobin revealed “Seven Secrets for Standard Eight: Accessibility Review When You’re Not an Accessibility Expert” as part of a Quality Matters (QM) session on October 26, 2020. I was able to watch Tobin in person as part of the keynote for our Teaching and Learning Symposium last year. Tobin is fantastic, knowledgeable, and engaging!
In this case, Tobin was focusing on general Standard 8 and understanding what the standard is asking for… and Tobin quoted: “General Standard 8. Accessibility & Usability: The course design reflects a commitment to accessibility and usability for all learners.” There are six substandards:
- 8.1 Navigation facilitates ease of use.
- 8.2 Design facilitates readability.
- 8.3 Accessible text & images.
- 8.4 Alternative access to multimedia.
- 8.5 Multimedia facilitate ease of use.
- 8.6 Required tech has VPATs
Tobin noted that there is overlap among all of them except the last one. A three-minute activity called “Spot the Unmet Standard” was used identify accessibility needs in a GoogleDocument. The participants identified links that were not descriptive (text), tables that were images, cells that were split in tables, and underlined text was used on a webpage (GoogleDoc) that wasn’t a link. Tobin mentioned that the text was Comic Sans and there was one icon that wasn’t described and did not have alternative text.
Tobin then went on to describe accessibility secrets. The first one was control referring to what the instructors actually have control to change. The second secret was 1/3 of UDL, and Tobin explained that the only principle that is actually addressed by QM is multiple means of representation. Ease of use was the third secret Tobin shared, and for this, he suggested clicking everything on the page and navigating the course site. Secret 4 was readability and for this Tobin told the audience to focus on heading styles. Tobin shared that if you can find the H1… H2… HTML tags, chances are structured text accessible to screen readers is available. Secret 5 was about VPATs (Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates) is either yes or no. Secret 6 Tobin mentioned was that every standard can be tested using your phone: can you experience and use the media elements on your mobile device. Tobin reminded us to check for text-based alternatives, dynamic resizing… and other considerations. Secret 7 Tobin shared was about the AURS Site: the QM Accessibility and Usability Resource Site that we can access via our QM membership. Tobin asked: “is there one more way for you to access the information?” Tobin then ended by having the participants revisit the assignment at the beginning. Now the discussion included several “new” unmet accessibility needs. Tobin ended asking the participants to list their take-aways. Several attendees mentioned the use of phones to check for accessibility. I agree. I’ve been using my phone a lot to check how documents and activities look. I enjoyed this session and learned a couple of secrets. Importantly, I have a better understanding of how reviewers “check” accessibility according to QM.
