Skills for Access

Our Philosophy

An Approach to designing Accessible Multimedia for e-learning

There is no doubt that creating accessible multimedia for e-learning is not always straightforward and may seem a daunting or frustrating task to many. We want you to be encouraged to create accessible multimedia, and to do that we discuss here our approach to creating accessible multimedia for e-learning.

The purpose of Skills for Access is not to present a set of guidelines or requirements to be followed at all costs - accessible design is about more than that, and in this section of the web site we outline our recommended approach to using multimedia to enhance accessibility of the learning experience.

The Challenges of Accessibility, Multimedia and E-learning

First, though, we look at some of the reasons why accessible multimedia may not be used as extensively or successfully in teaching and learning to support disabled students as it might.

• There is an unconfirmed, but nagging feeling that some academics and learning technologists may be shunning the use of multimedia to provide stimulating and pedagogically valuable e-learning resources, and many may be using 'accessibility' implications as an excuse.
• Enthusiasm for the use of e-learning may also be dampened by the as yet undefined, but significant responsibility of avoiding unjustified discrimination against disabled students placed on educational providers by amendments to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).
• Others may be confused by the implications of accessibility guidelines, particularly where they may require significant resources or technical expertise to implement them, and where they may apparently conflict with pedagogic aims of the e-learning resource in question.
• There are also skilled multimedia professionals who have been developing exciting multimedia learning content for many years, but who now realise that their previously well-regarded work may be excluding specific groups. This may result in feelings of embarrassment, defensiveness or helplessness.

These effects are potentially damaging for the development of effective e-learning, which could result in:

• removal of existing valuable e-learning resources, or
• an increase in anodyne e-learning resources - that may meet some definition of 'accessible' but in which the learning experience is horribly diluted.
• de-motivation amongst developers and academics, resulting in a curtailment of e-learning development.

This needn't happen, though, so long as a thoughtful and holistic approach is adopted to the issue of multimedia, accessibility and learning.

On to Part 2: Multimedia can enhance the accessibility of learning