The stick and the carrot

Brightwave's Head of Learning Design James Cory-Wright rounds up July's e-Access '10 Conference and explores where the priorities lie in terms of accessibility.

"Greed and fear" - these are the two main drivers when it comes to embracing accessibility as identified by Dr Jean Irvine OBE, Commissioner, Equality and Human Rights Commission at July's e-Access '10 conference. How true and not just about accessibility!

Actually Dr Irvine was being really positive, as was the tone of the conference in general, about the fact that there is often a strong business case for taking accessibility seriously as proven by the Royal Mail's massive efforts in this area. There also seemed to be a general recognition that although much more could be done in this area, progress is being made. A case in point would be the really useful accessibility features built in to the operating systems of the iPhone and iPad. For example, there's the screen reader for the iPhone downloadable from iTunes and the tactile resizing of text in the book application of the iPad.

However, on the fear side, it was sad to hear how many people with complaints about lack of accessibility accept settlements and drop their cases before they come to court. In other words, although the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) is undoubtedly a profoundly positive piece of legislation, there also need to be prosecutions for it to make a lasting impact.

This whole thing about accessibility being, on the one hand, a basic human right one instinctively buys into, but on the other, a box organisations wish only to tick, at no extra time or cost, is an awkward one for the e-learning designer.

On the one hand it would be good to be designing e-learning that is, by default, utterly accessible in every way - from working with screen readers to having large easy-to-read text none of which is hidden behind pictures or links.

But apart from increasing screen count (cost) because there would be less content on any given screen, where would be the 'wow factor' so often requested? In fact, when it comes to producing e-learning, increasingly the priority is what could be perceived as style rather than substance. Especially, as more and more e-learning is seen as an extension of delivering the brand.

At the conference we showed a visually attractive, vibrant and busy menu designed for an award winning e-learning course. It was seized on by an accessibility expert as a graphic example of inaccessible design. Fortunately, we were demonstrating it as an example of where we'd recognised this as an issue up front and built in to the course an alternative 'accessible' version of the same menu.

But this, of course, begs the question as to where all of our priorities lie? Would we have won the pitch for the work with a more functional, less engaging and visually off brand,but totally accessible, proposition?

And would the judges have awarded us first prize for a course that made less use of entertaining Flash animations but was wonderfully accessible? As for the learning - where does that sit in all this!?

Read more blog posts on accessibility