Language and comprehension difficulties
Overview of the challenge
Where an e-learning resource includes the presentation of textual content, and requires students to read, understand and act on on-screen written information, difficulties may be encountered by students who have trouble with reading and comprehension.
Meeting the challenge
Meeting this challenge when using multimedia:
Present the resource's text in a way that makes on-screen reading as easy as possible.
Be as consistent as possible both in the design, layout and functionality throughout the resource, and in concepts and terminology used.
Allow users to customise the visual display of content, for example through changing text/background colour combinations or changing text size or font.
- How to enable user customisation - in Director/Shockwave.
- How to enable user customisation - in Flash.
- How to enable user customisation - in HTML.
- How to enable user customisation of media players.
Make sure that, where textual information is provided, it can either be accessed and read by text-to-speech software, or is available in audio format.
- How to enable audio output of on-screen text - in Director/Shockwave
- How to enable audio output of on-screen text - in Flash
- How to enable audio output of on-screen text - in HTML
Explore using different forms of multimedia to enhance textual information, such as video or animated illustrations, graphics such as photographs, diagrams and mindmaps.
Related Resources
Challenges to Learning
Articles
- Accessibility Metadata and Learning Objects
- Multimedia: Enhancing Ability
- Using accessible video and audio to enhance e-learning for disabled students
- The potential of multimedia to enhance learning for students with dyslexia
Case Studies
- Natasha - part time MSc student and Project Manager, who has dyslexia
- TK Vincent - a student of English Language and Linguistics, who is hard of hearing