How to Really Make On-line Learning More Accessible

Make Education Accessible - that is the mission of OpenClassrooms, the online learning company where I work. One can’t help but fall in love with a mission like that. I did! As a company, we are bringing education to millions of people all around the world, many of whom would not have had the opportunity of furthering their studies, for a multitude of different reasons. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning. 

But Accessibility doesn’t stop at the mere providing of content. What about ensuring that everyone has an equal chance of using that content? Including those with added challenges of visual, auditory, cognitive and/or motor disabilities. How can we adapt our content and training to benefit everyone? This is what we consciously strive to do at OpenClassrooms. 

According to the World Health Organization, 16% of the population suffers from some form of disability, and almost 85% of these disabilities are invisible. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health#

After joining the Pedagogical Quality Assurance (QA) team, I embraced the project of ensuring that our content was accessible to learners with disabilities. I didn’t realize what a huge task I was getting myself into, and the more I delve into it, the more I realize how much still has to be done. It’s the kind of project that will always be Work In Progress, but what is so encouraging is to see that even small changes can have a huge impact. For example, here is some feedback we received from a student with a visual disability:

(translated from French)

About OpenClassrooms "I've always appreciated the quality of its content, the format of its courses and the broad scope of the areas taught. What's more, its perfect accessibility allows me, as a blind person, to access the same knowledge as everyone else, with equal comfort."

Maybe you, too, are thinking about Accessibility issues, and maybe (like me) diving into the official WCAG guidelines has been overwhelming! Rest assured, it’s not necessary to be a techy geek, nor even be super comfortable with the digital world. All it takes is Care. This introductory article, to be followed by two others dedicated to specific categories of disabilities,  aims at presenting some simple ideas and tweaks that will turn your care into actionable steps to help you and your teams make your online training more accessible. Having education on-line is already a step in the right direction for many people with disabilities, now it is our collective duty to make sure it is a tool for educational equity.

When looking at action points (through my perspective of the Learning Experience), I identified three main areas where we can have a real impact, and I will address each of them briefly:  Raise awareness, Unleash potential and Design with Accessibility in mind.

Raise awareness

The QA team, responsible for the quality of the content that is made available, is particularly aware of these needs and we have developed a number of guidelines on Accessibility and Inclusivity for the content designers in our company. It became obvious, however, that simple criteria with check-boxes were not enough. Just take the subject of textual descriptions of images (“alternative text”), for example, everyone seemed to know, theoretically, that these descriptions are necessary for the blind. But without putting ourselves in the shoes of someone with visual disabilities, it is difficult to imagine to what extent these descriptions change the learning experience and how exactly to formulate them.That is why a training session on the subject of making our content accessible became so useful. Although the criteria were also presented and explained during that session, what seemed more valuable was the actual demonstration on how VoiceOver works. For those who are not familiar with this tool, it is a Screen Reader that converts text to oral language (NVDA and JAWS are another two examples), used particularly by people with visual disabilities. It works very well, if the content is formatted correctly. By asking the attendees to close their eyes and actually listen to the Screen Reader on some of our courses, it became so much clearer how disabling it is when an image has no oral description (“alternative text”). Repeating the exercise with improved formatting helped drive that message home and proved to be an effective way of convincing our teams how important these issues are. 

At OpenClassrooms, I’m not the only one to get out of bed with a purpose every morning. A number of different teams such as the Tech team, the Admissions team and the Mentorship team, to name only a few, inspired and energized by our company’s mission, have undertaken a variety of initiatives to raise awareness.  In fact a dedicated Accessibility Task Force meets weekly and includes representatives from different teams, in order to pool our efforts and increase our impact. Furthermore, a company-wide Accessibility channel was created where anyone can post subjects and take part in instant discussions about Accessibility issues that impact our students. As you can see, this is a subject we feel very strongly about. Some of the other actions taken include:

• A training session by the CRA (Centre de Ressources Autisme) for the Admissions team, to help them recognize and guide learners on the autistic spectrum,
• Inclusivity workshops organized by the Learning Designers, 
• Workshops on adapting our content for people with visual disabilities organized by Quality Assurance and Learning Designers, 
• Presentations in the Student Success Teams to share their knowledge and awareness of these students,
• Webinars created by Mentorship to discuss ways of supporting students with special needs.

OpenClassrooms has also created some free courses on the subject to raise awareness not only in the company, but to reach as far as we can. You can find these courses here, if you’re interested. (They are also available in French): 

• “make your web content Accessible” https://openclassrooms.com/en/courses/6663451-make-your-web-content-accessible
• code an accessible website in html & css https://openclassrooms.com/en/courses/6663461-code-an-accessible-website-in-html-css/7036991-create-accessible-content

One cannot communicate too much about this topic. The nature of the subject being what it is, it is not immediately visible on a daily basis and is hence easy to forget. Regular communication, workshops, sharing of insights and of student feedback ensure that it  remains in the forefront of our minds and that the needs of these students are taken into account. 

Unleash potential: human interaction and tailor-made accommodations

In any learning context, whether it is online or in person, the human element is what  undoubtedly makes the difference. Students with disabilities are more aware of this than anyone else. So many of them have had to struggle through their academic years, trying their best to manage in a system that is clearly not adapted to their needs, with educators who are often not trained or supported to take these differences into account. 

Research shows that students with learning disabilities are more likely to drop out of school, generally have lower grades than those who don’t and tend to not go on to higher education. https://www.discoveryaba.com/statistics/learning-disabilities-prevalence 

Given the extent of their struggles, the very act of pursuing further studies warrants huge respect and admiration. Providing support and encouragement to students with disabilities is vital.

The OpenClassrooms model of online learning has always recognized the importance of human contact. Each student who enrolls with us will have a number of key contacts.  If the student has disclosed their disability, each of these key contacts will have the necessary information concerning the student’s challenges and the accommodations they require. Let’s take a look at a couple of these key contacts and some of the actions they have undertaken for learners with disabilities.

• a dedicated Student Success Manager : someone with whom they can touch base regularly and overcome potential obstacles, be they motivational, organizational or educational.

-Student Success have two dedicated Disability Coordinators who are available to guide students needing accommodations.  

-They are also in the process of designating “Disability Specialists” in each team to streamline coordination company-wide.

• a Mentor : an expert who works in the field that the student is studying. They meet with their students on a weekly basis to discuss their progress and guide them towards the completion of their projects (typically 10 - 12 projects need to be validated during a learning path).

-A number of mentors and assessors are labeled “handi-accessible”, meaning that they are experienced in dealing with people who have special needs.

-Disabled students can have shorter mentoring sessions more often, or even asynchronous mentor sessions, if necessary.

-Due to the involvement and care of the Admissions and Mentorship teams, the process for students to declare their need for accommodations has been simplified and the sharing of this information between key contacts has recently been streamlined with an internal “accommodations file” that follows the student throughout the learning path.

• Project assessors : people who evaluate the students’ projects and skill acquisition during one-on-one Project Presentation sessions.

-As these sessions can be a source of stress and anxiety, certain accommodations can be put into place. But this is the subject of the next paragraph, immediately after the following feedback that we received from a disabled student: 

(translated from French)

"At OpenClassrooms, I really found a very supportive learning environment, and relationships with others where I found myself on an equal footing. I've even rediscovered a taste for learning."

Apply tailor-made accommodations: One size does not fit all

It is clear that traditional forms of summative evaluation can validate certain skills effectively. However, the world has changed, and today, with extensive internet access and OpenAI, a simple regurgitation of academic knowledge has become less valuable. Other skills such as applying knowledge, problem-solving and using critical thinking have become key. That is why our pedagogical model is based on real-life professional projects that need to be completed by the students. This model is particularly well-suited to students with learning disabilities who often struggle with more conventional methods of evaluation.

However, our model also requires students to present their work orally, in Project Defense sessions at the end of each project. This kind of interaction is challenging for most students, but can be extremely complicated for people with certain disabilities. For this reason, we have put in place specific accommodations, when necessary. A valuable lesson-learned in this field is that one needs to have a holistic view of the student before applying the accommodations. What are the challenges this particular student faces ? What are the real and perceived needs? What learning program is the student on? What skills will the student need in order to be employable in the chosen field? The accommodations granted will depend on the answers to these questions.  Let me give you three concrete examples to illustrate what I mean (the names are fictional for reasons of privacy):

• Janet D, a student on the Web Developer path, is on the autistic spectrum, making interactions with others particularly difficult. The level of anxiety she feels before Project Defense sessions is so high that she struggles to sleep before the assessment, and has difficulty concentrating when the assessor asks questions. Together with her Student Success Manager, they felt that keeping the same Assessor for all the projects could help this student reduce her level of stress and enable her to show her true potential. This is something we were able to put in place. 
• Daniel S, a student on the IT Technician path, on the other hand, is also on the autistic spectrum. He feels mild anxiety but manages to interact without too much difficulty. Despite an initial request to keep the same assessor for all his projects, following the advice of professionals, it was decided that we would encourage him to change assessors, in the same way that neurotypical students are required to do. It was clear that Daniel, who managed to interact without undue angst, would benefit from this. It would help him to get used to interacting with different people as most IT technicians have to do on a daily basis. Having this practice in the “safe” context of project assessments could be instrumental in increasing his self-confidence and helping him in his future professional context. Again, our aim at OpenClassrooms is not merely to help students obtain a degree; our objective is to help them find a job. The accommodations are there to help the students achieve this goal.
• Another student, Shaun R, on the Digital Marketing path, has cognitive disabilities and struggles to concentrate on oral input.  For his Project Defense sessions, he asked to receive the questions in writing a few days before the sessions, so that he could prepare correctly. However, after research and discussion, it was decided that overcompensating would not be beneficial to Shaun. Applying accommodations does not mean removing all challenges.  We did offer a compromise: we instructed the Assessors to focus the questions on the subjects specifically mentioned in the Project Presentation section of each project. and advised Shaun to concentrate on those areas to prepare his answers accordingly.  We also asked the Assessors to please write any questions - using direct, straightforward language - in the chat, or on the screen, during the sessions, so that the student had time to process these questions in the written format.  We feel that these accommodations are more beneficial to Shaun, will unleash his true potential,  and will help him to prepare not only for future job interviews, but also for professional interactions.

These examples highlight the importance of adapting one’s approach not only to the disability in question, but to the particular profile of each student, to their real and perceived challenges and to the career they are hoping to pursue.  

Design content with Accessibility in mind 

Good design enables; bad design disables. Designing for accessibility ensures that all learners can access and interact with the content in a way that works for them. It means rethinking certain usages that we often take for granted. For example, using a mouse: in fact, not everyone is able to use one. Think of a blind person trying to position the cursor, or someone with motor disabilities. These people will most often use assistive technology, such as Screen Readers or braille tools, or in the case of certain motor disorders, keyboard navigation.  To test whether your site is adapted to this usage, try and navigate only with the keyboard. You will have a better idea of the difficulties one could encounter, especially when certain fields are not formatted correctly, making it impossible to activate an input field or link without using a mouse.  

At OpenClassrooms, our platform itself has been designed with accessibility in mind, making the layout clear and structurally similar from one page to the next, using good contrast and adapted font, making keyboard navigation efficient. This part was in the hands of our Tech Team, as a certain amount of coding and “tagging” was necessary for this to be made possible. We are proud to be moving closer to an AA grade for web accessibility throughout our platform and are even hoping to reach AAA in the not too distant future.

Our training content is in the form of text, video and occasionally audio formats and again we keep Accessibility in mind at all stages of production. We make a point of having clear objectives, clear instructions, straightforward language, short paragraphs, clear headings structure, clear font, and so on.

Here are some of our internal Quality standards concerning Accessibility, but I will deal with these in more detail in my next article. Watch this space! 

• all videos have closed captions
• all content is readable with a Screen Reader
• all images have Alt text or a Long Desc
• all graphics have a color contrast ratio of at least 4.5
• no information is referred to merely by mentioning its color
• text on hyperlinks are explicit and don’t just say “click here”
• language is simple, acronyms are explained and figurative expression is avoided

Of course, not everything is perfect. It is an ongoing project, and there is still a lot to do and a lot to learn. But when we receive feedback like the one below, it truly makes it all worthwhile and it is still a subject that gets me excited every morning!

(translated from French, names changed to initials) 

“My special thanks go to BM, my mentor, for his constant patience and courage. But above all, I'd like to thank you, my dear L (Student Success Manager), and the entire OpenClassrooms team, because this success would not have been possible without your constant support and patience.”

I hope this has given you some inspiration to work closer on Accessibility in online education and has highlighted how much more Accessibility involves than mere (but impressive) WCAG criteria. I would love to hear what you have done on your side to help these students, or what you’re planning on doing!  Feel free to share any ideas, suggestions, comments in the thread, and let’s collectively go all out to really Make Education Accessible.