Accessibility and inclusive design
Inclusive design, in a web context, means making technology available, and usable, to everyone regardless of language, ability, location etc. Accessibility addresses the needs of people with disabilities.
Disability laws require web providers to comply with certain accessibility standards; these differ according to the country of origin but are broadly similar. There has been a recent news story (Lewin, 2015) about how Harvard and MIT, edX founders, are not providing an accessible service to deaf and hard of hearing students, specifically many of their online lectures and videos do not provide closed captions.
Another article by Li (2015) looked at how Moocs are used by students where is English is a second language (ESL). Li proposes 6 features that can help these students be successful and engaged within the Mooc:
- provide language support on the Homepage
- language filter on the Course list
- the Course introduction page to state what language support will be available within the course
- Course information to be in small blocks
- use of closed captions and speed controls on videos
- specific discussion forums for ESL students with language support
The Metaliteracy Mooc and Coursera platform do provide some of these features. There is a language filter, course information is provided in small blocks, videos do contain closed captions and have speed controls. However, there is evidence that ESL students are struggling to meet the demands of the course assessment,
This learner has asked for a time extension on an assignment which had a particularly large word count. His request was met with a complete lack of understanding by one student:
a more understanding, but ultimately, unhelpful suggestion:
and support from another ESL student:
There was also a response from an Instructor which did not acknowledge the difficulties that ESL students were experiencing, was defensive in content, and offered no hope that his concerns would be addressed in this, or future iterations of the course:
Not surprisingly, Rajaram has not posted since in the discussion forums. I cannot say whether he is continuing with the course, but he does not appear to be taking an active part in it any longer.