Making an Online Statistics Course Accessible through ePub

iMBA & iMSA at Univ of Illinois - Slide 1

eLearning Office in the Gies College of Business, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Support for online & blended courses

Fully online graduate degree program: iMBA and iMSA

LMS: Blackboard and Coursera (~60 MOOC)

Online Student Support (½) - Slide 2

On-Campus Students with disabilities: Disability Resources & Educational Services

Online students with disabilities?

Accessibility Task Force in eLearning Office

• eLearning staff (ID & media director)
• Accessibility experts/consultants
• Academic advisor
• DRES correspondent

Online Student Support (2/2) - Slide 3

Documents and Files in Word, PDF, PPT

• Syllabus, assignment, and quiz/exam
• Alt-text for images
• Headings
• Tables

LMS check with screen readers (JAWS)

Video lectures: captions

Video Lectures - Slide 4

3~20 videos with about 45 ~90 minutes total per week

Cleaned captions in the video player

Transcript in word

Accessibility checked PPT with alt-text added

Accessibility checked word or pdf documents with alt-text added

Non-standard Accommodations - Slide 5

“Screen reader users may also prefer the transcript over listening to the audio of the web multimedia. Most proficient screen reader users set their assistive technology to read at a rate much faster than most humans speak. This allows the screen reader user to access the transcript of the video and get the same content in less time than listening to the actual audio content.”

MOOC Scale Accommodations

MOOC Scale Accommodations - Slide 6

Targeted individual accommodations

At-scale accommodations in MOOC learning environments

Extended Transcript: Usability - Slide 7

Replaces the less than adequate transcript, and lecture support files with a single document

• easily converted to other formats
• not a different “accessible” page
• modifiable by learners to fit their personal preferences

Extended Transcript: Goals - Slide 8

Single document (module by module)

Downloadable

Combines all module content to meet accessibility and, more importantly, usability needs

Extended Transcript

Extended Transcript Specifics - Slide 9

TOC

Link to the video

Slide images from PPT/Important scenes

PPT/Important text

Visual description for images

Transcript

Tables, MathML, links to external files, citations, etc.

HTML - ePub

General Layout of a Lesson - Slide 10

Lesson title, Link to a video, Slide title and number, Image of the scene, Text from the scene, Transcript

Access Support Team - Slide 11

Media director (John Tubbs)

ID (Jin Choo)

Accessibility consultants (Siri Bal and Knowbility)

HTML support

Copyedit/QC support

Extended Transcript Creation Process - Slide 12

1. Text/Image Extraction
2. Copy Editing
3. HTML Creation
4. HTML Review
5. ePub/PDF Conversion

Text Extraction - Slide 13

Extract text from PPT or scenes

Provide descriptions for images in the presentation

Copy Editing - Slide 14

Review video transcripts (verbatim) and presentations for clarity and grammatical accuracy

Edit supplemental materials following APA (i.e., citations, copyright check)

HTML Creation - Slide 15

Markup headings, tables, list, etc. with HTML

Add slides/ screenshots of videos with visual descriptions and transcripts)

HTML Review - Slide 16

Inspect HTML with the Axe testing engine

Check HTML against a review checklist for accessibility and QC check

Test links to ensure that they lead to the correct local or external source

Use spell check to check for typos and spacing issues

ePub Conversion - Slide 17

Clean HTML to prepare for conversion

Convert HTML to ePub using an ePub editor (Sigil)

Create a PDF version (Calibre)

Tools - Slide 18

Axe: an accessibility testing engine from Deque Systems

Image compressor

MathML: a tool for scripting math expressions in XML from Wiris

Sigil: ePub editor

WebMAP: a tool used to help build HTML documents

Calibre: a tool to convert ePub to PDF

Challenges with a Stat Course

Statistics for Management Decision Making - Slide 19

Module 1: Introduction and Summarizing Data

Module 2: Descriptive Statistics and Probability Distributions

Module 3: Sampling and Central Limit Theorem

Module 4: Inference

Module 5: Hypothesis Testing

Module 6: Statistical Inference Based on Two Samples

Module 7: Simple Linear Regression

Module 8: Multiple Linear Regression

Challenges - Slide 20

Math expressions in HTML

Visual description

Excel

Math Expressions in HTML - Slide 21

Simple math symbols in HTML

Math expressions in HTML

Math expressions on Coursera

Math expressions on Blackboard

MathML Example - Slide 22

$\left[\overline{x}\pm Z_{\frac{\alpha }{2}}\frac{\sigma }{\sqrt{n}}\right]$

Visual Description - Slide 23

No Alt-Text

Balancing details and general ideas

Instructors, TAs, student workers, paid service

Training

• Diagramcenter.org
• eLearning training: What and how to describe, Languages, Integrated Description for video recording

Visual Description Example 1 - Slide 24

The slide shows how to understand the margin of error in a normal distribution histogram. In the graph, there is a red line, which is the bell-shaped curve of a normal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 1. There are two blue vertical lines at one standard error away from the mean. It stands the confidence interval of 68.2%. Then, the vertical blue lines are changed to 2 standard errors away from the mean. This range is the confidence interval of 95.4%. Finally, the vertical blue lines are changed to 3 standard error away from the mean. This represents the confidence interval of 99.7%.

Visual Description Example 2 - Slide 25

The graph is a scatter plot with no title listed. The horizontal x-axis shows height in centimeters ranging from 130 to 180 in increments of ten. The vertical y-axis shows weight in kilograms ranging from 30 to 90 in increments of ten. The graph contains approximately 100 points that seem to be evenly spread along a linear trend that goes from the lower left corner, where weight and height are small, to the upper right corner, where both quantities are large.

Accessible Excel (1/2) - Slide 26

Courses handling a lot of data in Excel in the Gies College of Business

Accessible Excel tutorial (Presentation at CSUN 2019)

• Test with screen reader (JAWS)
• Easy navigation, identification of data, & clear instruction on any related activities for screen reader users
• No multiple versions

Accessible Excel (2/2) - Slide 27

ePub sample page with a download link to excel files

Final Notes - Slide 28

Extended transcript in ePub

• Meeting accessibility standards but “usable” wins
• The most flexible format to allow adaptability
• Best offline access

Faster creation – early in the course creation process

Q&A

Questions - Slide 29

jchoo@illinois.edu

Gies eLearning Office - Access Training Blog