Education and training for accessible web design

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Education and training for accessible web design

• Jonathan Willson
• Jenny Craven and Richard Eskins
• Manchester Metropolitan University

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Who we are

• Department of Information and Communications, MMU
• Jonathan lectures in web design, and technology
  and the law
• Richard lectures in web design, and organising
  information
• Jenny is a research fellow in CERLIM
• Centre for Research in Library and Information
  Management

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Our take on things

• technology department in a Humanities Faculty
• usability and accessibility are core to achieving
  web design that is fit for purpose
• traditional expertise in information retrieval
  and storage
• e.g. cat class, card sorting, librarianship,
  information management, community profiling

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There is a problem

• At yesterdays workshop
• Chris Power exclaimed Baffling!
• Whats going on?
• Web developers are not being trained.
• Helen Petrie later said, Guidelines are
  necessary but not sufficient.

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Empirical evidence

• there is a lack of progress in improving the
  accessibility of web sites per se
• progress has stalled in the public sector
• Riga Declaration
• Cabinet Office eAccessibility study
• MeAC Report
• EC e-Inclusion campaign

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web_access

• 2-year multilateral project funded by EC Lifelong
  Learning Programme
• Erasmus sub-programme under the Action
  Curriculum development Development of European
  modules
• main outcome is the development of a distance
  learning module with regard to national diversity
  at a European level in the field of accessible
  web design

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Project Partners

• Austria Coordinators
• Germany
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Spain
• UK
• interest already expressed in Czech Republic and
  Switzerland

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Deliverables

• State of the Art
• Curriculum
• Content and learning materials
• Accredited courses
• eLearning tool including authoring
• Dissemination

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State of the Art

• What have we found?
• A lot of stuff TechDIS packs, Netskills
  training materials, AbilityNet courses, EASI
• Accredited provision a drop in the ocean EASI
  and the University of Southern Maine, Design for
  All survey
• Accredited degrees ?? Linz

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Curriculum

• 6 content areas, 19 (-ish) courses
• Fundamentals of accessibility (3)
• Guidelines and legal requirements (2)
• Design and usability (2)
• Assistive technologies (3)
• Special knowledge on accessibility (7)
• Project development (2) (or 6 ?)

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Our wishes

• Distance Masters in Accessible Web Design at MMU
• credit-bearing modules
• short courses
• a quiet life

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