Champ-Blackwell, Siobhan wrote:
And the page doesn't even work today - i'm assuming its been overwhelmed with users, but everytime i get on it, and try the interactive tools, it times out.
siobhan
Hi Siobhan,
It works fine with firefox. What browser are you using?
Andy,re:
Meanwhile, don't get me started on Web accessibilty for the disabled. I
ran an accessibility test on the homepage and the "Inside the Pyramid"
page, which describes the pyramid in greater detail. Both failed even
the most basic accessibility standards; in the case of the homepage, it
was because it didn't have alternative text descriptions for all the
images on the homepage....
May I take your "don't get me started" as a rhetorical device
(aposiopesis)?
On Tuesday, I finally had a chance to see the Virtual Learning Platform
used in several distance training projects of a program I have
translated for. The variant I saw is used in a Gender & IT project
financed by the Swiss Office Fédéral de l'Egalité (Federal Office for
Equal Chances).
It is nice because it looks like a village square, with little
Playmobile guys representing students and teachers. But it is so wide
you have to scroll left and right continuously, and it is in Flash with
no alternate text version.
When I pointed out that Flash cuts off blind people, the leader of the
Gender & IT project was puzzled: "How can a blind person use a computer
to start with?" I was even more puzzled by her asking, but I explained.
Now the real problem is that another variant of the same Flash platform
is being beta-tested in 7 public middle schools of Ticino. Should the
test lead to a recommendation of its generalisation to all middle
schools, there is a strong chance that the accessibility issue won't get
raised until it's too late.
I just do translations and a few web searching jobs for them, whereas
they have a big team of teaching and of tech experts, so what I say has
no sway, per se. But I also spoke with one of the tech people there: he
at least is aware that the problem is bound to come up, as accessibility
of state web sites is made compulsory by the disabilty law that came
into force on Jan. 1st, 2004 - though he is still wondering how to make
the virtual platform accessible.
I showed him the DDN site and he bookmarked it because he really liked
the easy connection between community, blog and profile. And if the
teaching experts want to stick to their visual metaphor (which might
make sense at middle school), maybe they could go for something like
http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/home/index.cfm , but with alt texts for
all pics.
ENT (Education with New Technologies) is one of the first e-learning
sites Bonnie Bracey introduced me to, 5 years ago. The visual interface
hasn't changed since: why should it, if it works?
cheers
--
Claude Almansi
www.adisi.ch
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