[Nfbofsc] FW: The Blackboard Online Coursework and Learning Environment: Accessibility Reports from Two College Students and One Instructor, Dan's tip for July 14 2015

[Steve & Shannon Cook]

Steve and Shannon Cook

Steve on Dice World: Steve6009

Steve on Twitter: @SteveCook67

Today I married my best friend.  

The one that I laugh with, live for, love.

October 11, 2003 

 

From: dan Thompson [mailto:dthompson5 at mchsi.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 3:35 PM
To: dan Thompson
Subject: The Blackboard Online Coursework and Learning Environment:
Accessibility Reports from Two College Students and One Instructor, Dan's
tip for July 14 2015

 

Yesterday Mother Nature was in a very very bad mood.  She rained down upon
us a little over two inches and was a very big blow hard of over 60 mph in
our case.  Power suffered as well.

But she is apparently feeling better.  It is 93 degrees with a heat index of
101. Yesterday the heat index was 110 at a temperature of 90 degrees.


Things to ponder:

.         If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?

.         If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself,
is it considered a hostage situation?

 

Fact of the day:

Sammy Sosa is the only player in MLB history to hit 60 or more home runs in
three different seasons, and yet he didn't lead the majors in home runs in
any of these seasons. 

The eye of the Colossal Squid is the largest of any known animal, at up to
11 inches in diameter.

Looking to expand his fan base, a young Elvis Presley landed a monthlong gig
at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. Unfortunately, the booking didn't last. After
just one performance (on October 2, 1954), the management threw Elvis out
onto the street because he wasn't singing country "correctly."

In 2000, Michael "Wild Thing" Wilson of the Harlem Globetrotters set a new
world record by dunking a basketball at a height of 12 feet (24 inches above
a standard rim).

 

I have several students I work with who are using the blackboard and this
article helped me significantly in retiring some of my work arounds.  Hope
it is  useful to one of you or a friend who has children in college etc.
Some high schools are also moving towards using blackboard or Skyward.

 

The Blackboard Online Coursework and Learning Environment: Accessibility
Reports from Two College Students and One Instructor

Jamie Pauls

>From AFB'S AccessWorld

 <http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160702>
http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw160702

 

For most everyone, summertime conjures up images of grilling hot dogs,
swimming in the pool, and spending quiet evenings with friends and family.
For some of us, even as we make the most of the summer months, we are
already beginning to think about autumn. As the temperatures cool down and
the air becomes crisp in the early morning, many will be heading to college.
Some will be leaving home for the first time, preparing to make their way in
a whole new world, jumping headlong into studies of one sort or another.
Others of us will teach in front of a group of new students who are eager to
learn about music, sociology, history, or a host of other subjects. Students
will move belongings into dorm rooms and purchase books, while instructors
will revise the syllabi, update study guides, and prepare exams for the
semester.

Historically students with visual impairments have had to figure out where
to obtain accessible textbooks, and determine in which formats they were
available. Some students had exams provided in braille, but most needed
someone to read exam questions aloud and possibly write down their
responses. Instructors with visual impairments had their own issues to deal
with. When I first began teaching a music appreciation class at a local
community college in 1993, I prepared my class notes using a Perkins
Brailler, and wrote exams using an electric typewriter. Over the past 20
years, the landscape has changed a lot. Books are now available in
electronic format, and exams are often administered online. For blind
people, the changes mentioned above are both a blessing and a curse. Many
services are barely accessible with screen reading technology, and many
institutions don't even know what accessibility means for a visually
impaired person.

In this article, we will take a look at  <http://www.blackboard.com/>
Blackboard, a Web service used by many colleges to provide course materials,
send out announcements, post grades, and administer tests. We will look at
Blackboard from the perspectives of two students and one instructor, all of
whom are blind. The perspectives consider what works and what needs
improvement. If you are a student or teacher reading this article, perhaps
you will gain some understanding of what Blackboard is, and what questions
you need to ask your college or university in order to make your experience
using Blackboard as rewarding as possible.

Blackboard from the Student Perspective

Ali Krage has matriculated in August of 2013. At the first school she
attended, her experience with Blackboard was not positive. JAWS, her screen
reader of choice, lost focus a lot and she found it difficult to use the
Blackboard website. At the  <http://www.cod.edu/> College of DuPage, a
community college in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where she is working toward a
degree in Criminal Justice, Krage's experience with Blackboard has been
quite different.

She is now able to view course materials such as the class syllabus with no
problems. Announcements from her professors go to her e-mail inbox as well
the Blackboard website. Quizzes and exams administered through Blackboard
have proven to be a bit more problematic. Sometimes, it is necessary to
physically drag the mouse in order to choose an answer to a test question.
Krage's instructors allow her to read exam questions on Blackboard, and
write the correct answers in a Microsoft Word document. Since she uses JAWS
at the default speaking rate, timed exams are a challenge as well.

Krage did not receive specialized training in the use of Blackboard, but she
feels that knowledge of the navigation commands built into her screen reader
are all she needs to find her way around the service. Her college
understands that she sometimes has difficulty using Blackboard, and provides
alternate methods for her to complete assignments when extra assistance is
required.

Paras Shaw has been in college for five years. He is currently taking online
classes, and hopes to someday work as a vocational rehabilitation counselor.
His experience with Blackboard has been generally very positive. Like Krage,
Shaw has not had training on the use of Blackboard with a screen reader, but
he also feels that a good grasp of screen reader navigation commands is
generally sufficient to successfully use the service. That said, he does
believe that specific documentation regarding the use of the Blackboard
service with a screen reader would be a good thing. Shaw generally uses JAWS
for Windows when using Blackboard, and believes that JAWS provides the best
experience (NVDA works fairly well, but not as well as JAWS). Shaw is
surprised at this, since the Web is often considered one of NVDA's strong
points. Safari on the Mac works pretty well with Blackboard, but not as well
as JAWS and NVDA.

Using Blackboard, Shaw is able to participate in discussion forums and take
exams, and was even able to read alt text descriptions of pictures
associated with an art class he recently took. The one area where he has
difficulty is in viewing class grades after his instructors post them to the
site. Shaw feels that the more familiar an instructor is with Blackboard and
the accessibility challenges encountered by blind students, the better the
Blackboard experience will ultimately be for that student. Good
communication between student and instructor is essential.

Blackboard from the Instructor Perspective

As mentioned earlier in this article, I have been teaching a music
appreciation class at  <http://www.ncmissouri.edu/> North Central Missouri
College. A couple of years ago, when I learned that all instructors at the
college would be required to use Blackboard as a part of classroom
instruction, I was both excited and apprehensive. If all went well, I could
pretty much do away with hard copy course materials. If not, I wasn't sure
how I would effectively continue to teach the class. The director of the IT
department at our college was an invaluable asset to me. He wrote several
short, step-by-step documents on how to accomplish tasks such as adding
grades to the grade center, posting announcements to Blackboard, and the
like. Although he was not using a screen reader, he went as far as to use
the keyboard and tell me how many presses of the Tab key were required to
get to certain parts of the site and what my screen reader should announce
when I got there.

I purchased a couple electronic books on using Blackboard, but I found that
they were not particularly helpful. Many of the screen shots were not well
labeled, and Blackboard changes from institution to institution, depending
on how the college, and individual instructors, choose to configure it. I
found that Googling very specific questions helped me accomplish tasks as
needed. The IT director helped me set up my first class, and I was able to
look at his example and figure out how to accomplish the same task in the
future. Although JAWS read the website with few errors, I found that
navigating Blackboard was a bit like navigating  <http://amazon.com/>
Amazon. It was doable, but painstakingly slow until I became familiar with
the site. When entering grades into the Grade Center area of the site, I
found an option to "turn screen reader mode on." This caused previously
unusable tables to read as they should. Neither Krage nor Shaw were aware of
any screen reader mode option being present on the student side of their
Blackboard environments. Perhaps it was unavailable to them, or maybe they
simply weren't aware of its existence. Ironically, one area of Blackboard
that gave me some real trouble was the checkbox needed to make the course
available to my students once I got it configured the way I wanted it. None
of the four screen readers I tried read the radio buttons in any order that
made sense to me, and I had to resort to asking my colleague in IT to make
the class available to students for me. I continue to provide study guides
and exams to students in traditional hard copy format, so I have no
experience with submitting and grading assignments on Blackboard.

The Bottom Line

In our discussions, Krage, Shaw, and I all agreed that Blackboard was
definitely accessible to blind users. Because there is a lot of
configurability in the Blackboard service, no two experiences will be
exactly the same. All three of us required assistance from our institutions
in using various aspects of Blackboard. Several screen readers were tested
and all were able to provide varying levels of access to the site. The three
of us all found that JAWS had a bit of an edge over other screen readers,
whether it was in setting place markers in various parts of the Blackboard
site, properly announcing whether menus were collapsed or expanded, or
reading tables correctly.

If you are a student who needs to use Blackboard for your studies, or if you
are an instructor who is about to teach a class using Blackboard, be
prepared to spend some time learning the service. Don't give up, and by all
means, ask for help from your institution if you run into trouble.

Blackboard has an
<http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Resources/Accessibility.aspx>
accessibility page that talks about the developer's commitment to
accessibility. Included are a set of
<http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Resources/Accessibility/JAWS-Demo
.aspx> audio demonstrations of students and instructors performing specific
tasks on Blackboard with JAWS for Windows. These demos only provide audio
feedback from JAWS as the tasks are performed, but do not contain any audio
commentary on how to actually perform the task. Finally, when visiting the
Blackboard  <http://help.blackboard.com/> help page, do a search for the
word "accessibility" in order to view a list of keyboard commands for use
with Blackboard and to gain an understanding of how headings are used to
make navigation of the site easier with a screen reader.

Although there is bound to be room for improvement, it appears that
Blackboard is committed to accessibility for screen reader users, and I, as
a college instructor, applaud their efforts.

Product Information

Blackboard

 <http://www.blackboard.com/> www.blackboard.com 

 

 

 

Proverbs 11:2  <http://www.christnotes.org/bible.php?q=Proverbs+11&ver=niv>
NIV 

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. 


To subscribe to Dan's tips or HotSpot with God Daily Devotional, send a
blank message to dthompson5 at mchsi.com and include "subscribe Dan's Tips" or
Subscribe HotSpot with God" in the subject line.

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbofsc_nfbnet.org/attachments/20150714/4e8d85b6/attachment.html>