Challenges to Learning
There is a tendency to assume that 'disability' can be equated with a complete loss of one specific sensory, cognitive or physical ability. In fact, most people who encounter access barriers when trying to access on-line resources do so as a result of a combination of impairments of varying severity.
Access barriers may not even be a result of a particular impairment - there may be environmental or technological constraints that may reduce the ability to access and use a resource. For example, multimedia that relies on audio as an output may become inaccessible when accessed in a noisy environment where the audio cannot be heard; it may also be impossible to access in a quiet environment such as a library. Similarly, if students are expected to be able to use a distance learning multimedia resource at home, and the multimedia resource requires a specific version of software, technological limitations may prevent access for some.
Thus, when designing with accessibility in mind it's more effective to think of access barriers as a series of challenges that people may face when using multimedia and web content for learning purposes, rather than approach the task using a 'medical model' of disability. This is the approach taken by the IMS Global Learning Consortium, who in their work on accessibility and e-learning use the following definitions:
Disability: "a mismatch between the needs of the learner and the education offered"
Accessibility: "the ability of the learning environment to adjust to the needs of all learners"
In this section of the web site, we outline a number of Challenges to Learning, each of which may singly or in combination reduce or prevent access to e-learning for a student. From each Challenge is linked a number of relevant 'how-to' resources.
NB We are grateful to EA Draffan (Emptech) and Peter Rainger (Key2Access) who developed the concept of 'Challenges to Learning' as part of their Teaching and Learning Environments Matrix, which was further developed by the SCIPS project (Strategies for the Creation of Inclusive Programmes of Study).