While much of Sarah’s presentation covered accessibility features I was already fairly familiar with (i.e., VoiceOver, screen flashing for deaf/hard-of-hearing folks, and sticky keys for folks with mobility impairments), she started off demonstrating the new AssistiveTouch feature. It was a lot to absorb.

I had almost forgotten about AssistiveTouch until yesterday when I discovered New York Times tech dude David Pogue’s article from November 10th where he described the new AssistiveTouch features in greater (and great) detail.

Rather than having me comment any further, please head over to Pogue’s Post entitled Apple’s AssistiveTouch Helps the Disabled Use a Smartphone

The process to get involved does require installing a free Beta-Tester plugin to your WP install, activating it, and then downloading and installing the latest beta version of the WP core. I decided against installing this myself on this jebswebs blog as I was not sure if it would mess things up. They give you fair warning that once installed, it may be impossible to go back to a stable version – I’m fairly threat sensitive.

I encourage readers to check it out and consider testing and providing input. Here is the link to the Make WordPress Accessible blog.

• The education (K-12) textbook publishing business is very different from other forms of educational publishing (e.g., college textbooks) or general commercial book publishing. In many ways things have not changed in K-12 textbook publishing industry as dramatically as they have elsewhere. They had better get moving.
• There are 22 U.S. states called “state adoption states” where the curriculum is selected by a single statewide board of education and all schools use the same books. The remaining states are considered “open territory states” where the curriculum is selected by local school boards. In state adoption states, textbooks are chosen and remain in classroom use usually for a minimum of seven years because of the large replacement cost to the state. Many of the “state adoption” states actually have a customized set of textbooks geared specifically to their state curriculum and state learning standards. Texas is a “state adoption” state; Maine is an “open adoption” state. Here is a nice resource about textbook adoption process from the Association of American Publishers.
• The economics of school textbook publishing industry are complex and starting to change as pedagogy changes. I suspect, but I don’t have the data, that instructional materials are now more likely to be workbooks and thinner modular sets of content rather than the large, thick and heavy books of my youth. Most social studies textbooks are probably out of date by the time the ink dries. Math and Reading textbooks probably have the longest shelf life.
• The movement to experiential learning and project-based learning, particularly in the middle and secondary classrooms has dramatically changed the types of instructional materials used.  The increased attention to students’ individual learning styles and the principles of universal design for learning have transformed the practice of teaching in many classrooms with teachers moving away from the use of traditional textbooks.
• The internet has changed the world, albeit somewhat more slowly in our American classrooms than in our homes and businesses.
• Contrary to the predictions made in a Forrester article from 2000, the e-book is not dead. That may have been true in 2000, but not 2011. Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com now sell more e-books than paper books. Check out this data on e-book sales.

In my opinion, many of the folks publishing K-12 educational textbook are scared because things are all changing so fast and they fear that what happened to the music industry will happen to them. They have probably been reading things like this which looks like it was published 2-3 years ago.

If K-12 textbook publishers continue with the same old business plan, they will be gone.

I personally think the future for educational publishing never looked brighter – if they do it right. Here’s someone who agrees:

Peter C. Davis, president of McGraw-Hill Education stated last summer, “We are making content more usable and parsable so it can be targeted to create an individualized and personalized learning experience for students and produce desired learning outcomes.  We need to stop thinking of e-books as transformative.  They are not. Adaptive and interactive learning tools are where education needs to go and where the real opportunity lies. Bring on this new world. The quicker it happens the more exciting it is for us.”  (Source citation)

Whether you call them 21^st Century Learners or Digital Natives, today’s students in K-12 classrooms have been and continue to be exposed to information sources and delivery systems radically different from the ones that existed even a decade ago. The idea of going to a shelf to get a dictionary or an encyclopedia to find information is archaic. The idea that a textbook can hold all of the information a student needs to know, even for a semester, is almost as obsolete.

Rather than asking about where to get a digital textbook, we should be asking: “What are, and how do we acquire, the instructional materials needed to help students learn and to help teachers facilitate learning?

Some things to look at…

• Educational Publishing blog from the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP)
• From xplana: “How” Is More Important that “What” in the Future of Educational Publishing — Services, Tablets, and Mobile Expectations

Have a thought on this…comment please!

Photo credit: Licensed by Creative Commons by Crystal

Beginning I believe with Acrobat Pro version 9, which came out in mid-2009, Adobe introduced a built-in Accessibility Checker (AC) to assist users in making PDF documents accessible to people with disabilities. This was the first product I can remember to have this feature and the new feature was readily welcomed by those of us in the accessible design business. Since that time I have sung the praises of Adobe and the AC in presentations I’ve given, in e-mails to colleagues and in articles that I have written for Maine CITE and the State of Maine Office of Information Technology. The AC was simply a wonderful tool which made is very easy to check and fix accessibility errors in just about any PDF. What was best about the AC was that when run with the Full Scan settings, the application would create a complete and detailed report (the Accessibility Report) which listed the errors, AND provided links to the exact location in your document where the error occurred, AND provided a specific set of directions for how to fix the problem. This was a godsend to people eager to review and edit their PDFs to ensure accessibility. And it made it easy for anyone to make their PDFs accessible.

So last week I purchased and installed Adobe Acrobat X on my Windows 7 machine and have been running it through the paces. It all ran perfectly until I tried the accessibility checker on my first test document. It took a little while to find this feature since it is not automatically loaded in the Tools section that is a new feature in version X. But one of the neat features of Acrobat Pro X is the customizable menu bar (called Quick Tools). Using the Customize Quick Tools feature, I was quickly able to add a button which will activate the Full Scan Accessibility Checker.

But then the fun began. While reading the Accessibility Report and particularly the remediation directions provided in the Report, it became quickly apparent that it was impossible to proceed further. The directions for fixing errors were all wrong! I was stunned; the directions provided were for Acrobat Pro version 9, not Adobe Acrobat Pro X!

To make sure, I ran the test again on several other documents and each time, the AC provided remedies for fixing documents using version 9 of Acrobat Pro. The directions had not been updated!

In fairness, not everything is wrong. Apparently, for the new version of Acrobat Pro, the good people at Adobe reduced the number of editing tools, reorganized them and combined them into a smaller collection. The vast and complex number of tools was actually a shortcoming in version 9 and the new setup is much easier to understand in version 10. But changing the names and locations of the tools has made the directions for fixing error obsolete and incorrect.

So the good news is that the new Adobe Acrobat Pro X does have a great Accessibility Checker, and it will accurate work and find all of the accessibility errors in the PDF documents you scan. But for figuring out how to fix your document, you are currently on your own until Adobe updates the application and puts in the correct remediation directions.

Some might say that this is a minor annoyance and obviously just an oversight. To them I say: making documents – particularly PDFs – into accessible documents has always created contention since it is perceived as being difficult to do. As a result, very high proportion of the digital documents created everyday fail to be accessible for people with disabilities. Anything that can make the process smoother, faster, easier is a step in the right direction. The Accessibility Checking built into Adobe Acrobat Pro was this kind of step.

I’ve sent an e-mail to my friend Andrew Kirkpatrick, Adobe’s Group Product Manager for Accessibility, expressing my concerns and asking for a target date as to when this will be fixed. In the meantime, I don’t recommend that anyone upgrade to version X until this is fixed.

To help those of you who have already taken the plunge, I have figured out the correct directions for three of the most common accessibility errors: Creating PDF Tags, Adding Alternative Text to images and Specifying the Language of a document. The first most common accessibility error is the absence of any tagging in the document and this should always be the first thing you do after you run the Accessibility Checker.

Please note that there may be other ways to accomplish these remedies; I am only reporting those I have found so far by trial and error.

If you find errors or additions, drop me a line!

Here are the old directions and the corrected directions for fixing common accessibility errors in Adobe Acrobat Pro

Tagging the document

Directions for Acrobat Pro v 9 – Creating PDF Tags

If your document is not tagged, the AC will note this and offer these directions:

• Re-create the PDF file from the authoring application with tagging enabled (this primarily is for documents created with Adobe InDesign)
• Choose Advanced > Accessibility > Add Tags to Document to infer the tags.
• Choose Advanced > Accessibility > TouchUp Reading Order Tool to create the Tags tree manually using the TouchUp Reading Order Tool.
• Create the Tags manually using the Tags panel.

Corrected Directions for Acrobat Pro v 10 – Creating PDF Tags

If your document is not tagged, the AC will note this and offer these directions:

• Re-create the PDF file from the authoring application with tagging enabled (this primarily is for documents created with Adobe InDesign)
• Choose Tools on the Menu bar, Choose Accessibility (if Accessibility is not viewable, find the tiny “show or hide panels” button in the upper right part of the Tools menu, click on it and unhide Accessibility). Choose Add Tags to Document to infer the tags.
• Choose the Tags view panel. Where it says “No Tags available,” right click on this and choose Add Tags to Document.

Alternative text for images/figures

Directions for Acrobat Pro v 9 – Adding Alternative Text

Before repairing this problem, you must add tags to the document. (See directions above)

• To add alternate text to an image, choose Tools > Advanced Editing > TouchUp Object Tool. Click on the image. Right click and choose Properties…from the context menu. Click on the Tag tab and fill in the alternate text field.

Corrected Directions for Acrobat Pro v 10 – Adding Alternative Text

Before repairing this problem, you must add tags to the document. (See directions above)

• To add alternate text to an image, choose Tools on the Menu bar. Choose Content, and select the Edit Object tool. Click on the image. Right click and choose Properties…from the context menu. Click on the Tag tab and fill in the Alternate Text field.

Specifying Language attributes

Direction for Adobe Acrobat v 9 – Specifying a Language (adding language attribute to the document)

• Set the default language for the entire document by choosing File > Document Properties > Advanced tab and setting the Language field
• Set the language for all the text in a subtree of the Tags trees by selecting the element at the root of the subtree, right click and choose Properties, clicking on the Tag tab, and filling in the Language field
• Set the language of any amount of text by selecting the text in the Content panel, choosing Options > Properties, clicking on the Tag tab, and filling in the Language field.

Corrected Direction for Adobe Acrobat v 10 – Specifying a Language (adding language attribute to the document)

• Set the default language for the entire document by choosing File > Document Properties > Advanced tab and setting the Language field
• (There is no change here)Set the language for all the text in a subtree of the Tags trees by selecting the element at the root of the subtree, right click and choose Properties, clicking on the Tag tab, and filling in the Language field
• Select Tools from the top menu bar. Choose Content and select the Edit Document Text tool. Set the language of any amount of text by selecting the text with the Edit Document Text tool. Right click and choose Properties. Select the Tag tab in the TouchUp Properties window, select Language from the drop-down menu.

I had this feeling today when I read a series of articles from this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education about accessible and universal design in college websites (links to all articles below). The cover story for the series tells the story of Darrell Shandrow, a senior at Arizona State University at Tempe. Mr. Shandrow is a journalism major who at age 37 would be considered a “non-traditional” student. But what makes Mr. Shandrow all the more non-traditional is the fact that he is blind student who isn’t afraid of making a few waves.

The right place, right time comment has to do with the fact that I had just blogged a few days ago about this exact topic. It’s nice to see some supporting documentation for my position.

If you are interested in the stuff I write about here you should absolutely read these articles. And like most on-line news stories today there is a place to make comments. I find reading the comments to often be more informative than the article. In this case, the comments made by a few people prove the point of why we need to be advocates for accessible and universal design and why we need to be vigilant.

After reading the articles the first thing I did was send the links out to a half-dozen colleagues and put links on Twitter. Then I went and testing the home page of my alma mater. St. Francis College of Brooklyn would probably score in the lower third.

As someone who started their web design career as a university webmaster, I have a particular affection for this topic. But to me web accessibility for a college/university website is a no-brainer.

The series:

Chronicle of Higher Education article “Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online”

Sidebar: About Cal State’s success

Sidebar: Chart ranking the best and worst college web sites

Universal Design, Usability, and Accessibility

It was clear to me at the outset that the iPad will be a great asset to teachers as a personal learning tool for students of all ages. Given Apple’s commitment to universal design in all of their products, I was eager to hear a presentation given by Sarah Herrlinger at the ACTEM MAINEducation Technology Conference this week. I could easily spend this whole blog entry talking about all of the information that Sarah shared, but I wanted to get the word out about this particular resource.

Authored by Eric Sailers, the resource called “iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Apps for (Special) Education” was compiled from a list developed by Samuel Sennott, David Niemeijer and Sailers. You can access this on Scribd and save it, print it, or simply link to it. If you are like me and have been looking for a list of apps that can be used with students with disabilities in the classroom, this should be your first stop.

Spread the word!

Addendum: I just discovered that Eric Sailers has another, more recent, list that has some additional information. Check that out too. Here is the link on Scribd. And you may want to check out Eric’s blog Speech-Language Pathology Sharing. He has a list of links to other websites with even more information.

“The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which requires that smart phones, television programs and modern communications technologies are accessible to people with vision and hearing loss, has now passed both chambers of Congress and is headed to the President’s desk. President Obama is expected to sign the bill.”

According to the news release, among the highlights of the bill:

When signed into law, this legislation will give individuals with vision or hearing loss improved access to television programming, smart phones, the Internet, menus on DVD players, program guides on cable TV, and more. Specifically, it will:

• Mandate mobile phone companies to make web browsers, text messaging, and e-mail on smart phones fully accessible.
• Restore and expand requirements for video description of television programs, in addition to requiring cable companies to make their program guides and selection menus accessible to people with vision loss.
• Ensure people with vision loss have access to emergency broadcast information.
• Provide $10 million in funding each year for assistive technology for deaf-blind individuals
• Ensure that Internet-enabled mobile phones are hearing aid compatible.

For more information, see the PR Newswire and the Washington Post articles.

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Image licensed through Creative Commons – by liewcf

If you are interested in learning more about the accessibility of LMS (and many Web 2.0 things), with the research to back it, head on over to: How-To Guide for Creating Accessible Online Learning Content found on the cannect.org website. Thank you Hadi for this great resource.

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Image acquired through Creative Commons license – by Lizzardo on Flickr

If you have a client or boss to needs convincing as to why you need to build accessibility into your web design, have them take a look at this video.

DO IT on YouTube

Web sites come in many shapes and sizes and, given the magic of current technologies, can do many wondrous things. But to many, the inner workings of a website can be confusing. Having the responsibility of developing, or updating the web presence for your organization can be a major challenge. This article is designed to help.

Two Flavors

To begin this discussion, you should know that web sites still come in two major “flavors” – static and dynamic. To the knowledgeable purists reading this, I understand that there are no truly static websites, but please allow me some poetic license here.

The terms static and dynamic have little to do with the actual look of the website and refer more to the “backend” or inner workings of the site and to some extent the functionality of some or all of the features on the site. Either can be right solution for your organization, but how do you choose the right one for your organization? Let’s begin with some information about the flavors.

Static web sites are built using individual web page files written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML), along with some support files for styling (e.g., Cascading Style Sheets – CSS), images (e.g., JPGs, GIFs, etc.) and media elements (e.g., audio, video and Flash objects). Files are usually prepared off-line on a local computer using specialized web-authoring software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression, and then “published” to a web server connected to the World Wide Web (WWW). Note, there are other programs that purport to be able to create web pages (like MS-Word or MS- Publisher), but be careful. Good web design requires the right tools and techniques. Using the wrong ones can make your site misbehave or worse, not work at all.

The web files are typically “published” to a web server using a piece of software called a File Transfer Protocol or FTP client. The FTP client may be built into your web-authoring program, or it may be a separate program. The “web server” is a special application that runs on a specialized computer (also called a server) that is connected to the Internet. This web server does just what its name implies; it “servers up” your web files when “called for” by someone on the Internet.

Most organizations do not own their own web server and will use a “host” like Maine Hosting Solutions to serve up their website. The cost of this hosting service ranges from a few dollars per month to many thousands of dollars depending on the size of the website and the amount of traffic is receives. There are many options and a web design firm like jebswebs can assist you in this decision.

In a Static web site, when you want to change the content, someone has to change the local file and re-publish it to the web server, thus overwriting the original file. If it is something like a link on a menu bar, this may require that every web file on your site be changed and re-published also. So, this quickly can become time consuming.

With the exception of some simple executable files, most of the content in static websites is fairly flat, meaning it allows little or no interaction with visitors/users. In other words, people viewing the site will typically only be able to read or view the content and not able to write or submit content to the site.

When the World Wide Web was first developed in the early 1990s, designers had very limited choices of things they could do. Designs in those days were almost exclusively static in nature and developers were constantly challenged to make the user experience more interactive and exciting.

Dynamic web site development came out of that need for interaction. These sites often provide the user with the ability to interact with the content and provide some kind of feedback. But the real reason for calling these sites dynamic has to do with how the sites are constructed and maintained. In the dynamic web site, all of the content, styling files and related web documents are contained within one or more databases located somewhere on the Web and “controlled” or administered by an application called a Content Management System (CMS). The content is “hung” on the website using various templates written in a dynamic markup language such as PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion or Java. These templates are similar to HTML, but are more complex and can do a lot more things. Think of your website was a Christmas tree. The template is the tree itself with trunk and branches. It has some color and texture. The content is like decorations and lights that are hung on the tree. Each of your “pages” (also called nodes) uses the same tree, but the decorations and lights vary from page to page, node to node. Some of the “decorations” are built-in to the tree and will appear on every page/node. For example, the heading/logo area, the main menus and the footer of the page. You can also add blocks of content that will appear on every page/node. The choice is up to you.

There are many CMS applications out there  and each works a little differently. The three big ones, Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, have become the standard in the field. These are all “open source software” meaning that they are developed by volunteer code writers who are always trying to improve the code. They are also free and freely available to be modified and changed to meet your needs.

I should point out that there are commercial CMSs as well and they can cost many thousands of dollars to purchase and license each year.

The CMS is used to create and edit content and runs on the web server itself, requiring almost no additional software. Many of the CMSs have  built in image editors which can do some basic edits like resizing the image, however serious edits are usually done off-line with a local editing application. There are many modules, plug-ins and “widgets” that can be freely added to the dynamic site making the experience for the user very rich.

All CMSs allow for multiple users and the administrator can control how much access each user has to the website.

How to Choose

Generally the first consideration when trying to decide between a static vs. dynamic website is the basic size of the site. This can sometimes be decided by looking at the size of the organization. If the site is for a single person or small organization, you can probably get by just fine with a static site. If there are a large number of people going to be involved with this website, it’s probably best to go for a dynamic design. If you are looking at some kind of an e-commerce website – in other words you are looking to sell things on the Web – you are probably going to need a dynamic web site.

Next in your consideration is how often the content needs to be updated. Static sites by their very definition tend to have information with a relatively long shelf life. That is, if the information that you are putting on a website is relatively stable and will not be changing for months or years, you can get by just fine with a static site. If your content is changing more frequently than once per month, you should consider a dynamic website.

“Who will manage your content?” is your next question. If you have on your staff personnel that know how to design and update web pages, you are all set and can have either a static or dynamic site based upon your organization’s particular needs. However, if you have a small staff, or perhaps are a small nonprofit organization staffed with a handful of volunteers, you are going to need to either hire someone or find a volunteer with extra talents and time.

Finding staff or volunteers that know how to design and maintain a website is not as difficult as it once was, but sometimes keeping that staff is difficult. These people are usually in high demand and may get a better offer from one of your competitors.

Choosing a dynamic web site will be an advantage here in that adding, deleting and editing content is very easy. If you have ever ordered anything on line, written or commented to a blog, or added a comment to an online discussion group, you can easily learn how to work with a dynamic web site.

The last question you need to consider in selecting what type of web site you want is -how interactive do you want your site to be?

One of the big advantages of choosing a dynamic web site design is that they are designed for interaction. In some ways, that’s the goal of the dynamic design; it encourages lots of people to contribute and collaborate. However, you will be comforted in knowing that with a dynamic web design, you still have complete control of who can add, delete or edit content. You can also assign sections of your website to different parts of your organization so that only these groups can see and work with the content in that section. Or, you can open your site up to the whole world for input and discussion like many people do with blog sites. This is all entirely up to you.

Dynamic websites can also import content from multiple sources including automated ones so your website will be constantly updating and changing as these sources update content. And, as noted earlier, dynamic websites can be use to conduct commerce on the Web.

We can help

Whether you are considering your first website or updating one you’ve had for years, it can be very helpful to discuss your needs with a web design firm like jebswebs. We are here to help you with each stage of the design and development experience from concept development to implementation to staff training. Please feel free to contact jebswebs today to request a free initial consultation.