Accessibility: Has It Always Been a Thing?

Have you ever been on the People Mover at Walt Disney World? Do you remember walking up what looked like one giant escalator step to actually get to the ride? Do you remember having to rush to your vehicle before the doors closed? Well, here's a not-so-secret secret for you: the People Mover is not ADA compliant. It was built about 20 years before the Americans With Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990. Does WDW know this? Yes. Are there any plans to make it ADA compliant? Nope. Disney most likely will never do it because a.) the People Mover goes through almost every other attraction in the Tomorrowland area, so all of those rides would probably have to shut down too if the People Mover went down for accessibility refurbishment, and b.) The Walt Disney Company really only cares about profit. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. 

Anyway, ex-Cast Member bitter rant aside, accessibility seems to be more and more of a hot-button issue, particularly within the field of instructional design. It does not seem like accessibility for those with disabilities has been a major focus of attention when designing online courses until very recently. Am I wrong in saying that, those who have been in the field longer? Let me know. Accessibility has been a focal point at my job since I started there as a learning technologies intern last summer. A huge chunk of my internship consisted of me conducting quality assessments of courses, combing through their HTML codes to make sure that they were clean so that those students who use screen readers would be able to comprehend the page. Now that I am on the building side of the courses, I would say that I spend about the same amount of time performing the exact same task.

Recently, my team has had to do a lot of accessibility checks for one of our partner schools and these checks are not stopping any time soon. I'm not sure if learning management systems like Blackboard, Canvas, etc. have not included accessibility features until recently or maybe this particular university is just now getting caught up to everyone else, but it's incredibly time-consuming and I'm a bit surprised that they didn't consider these aspects of the courses when they were first built. I wonder how their students with disabilities coped, or if they just didn't have any (I doubt it.) It also makes me want to know if other colleges and universities, and even organizations outside of higher education, are also coming to terms with having to make their online courses and/or training accessible to all users.

What has been your experience with making online courses/training/etc. accessible?

Comments

  1. BayraiderJuly 10, 2020 at 2:21 PM

    Erin - you make some interesting observations. My experience with accessibility is spotty because my office writes for the US Navy. By definition, most of the disabilities that impact digital curriculum material will not be present in our target (captive) audience. Yet with government contracting, any curriculum produced by an outside source must '503 compliant' which adds to development costs even if no one will use those features.
    The flip side of that requirement is that continual development should lower the cost of adding those features.

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    Replies
    1. LeahJuly 14, 2020 at 12:23 PM

      As Bayrider mentioned, I don't have much experience with accessibility in my field because we write for law enforcement and most of the disabilities that impact digital curriculum aren't present among our learners. I think accessibility is very important to consider as an instructional designer though.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousJuly 12, 2020 at 11:40 AM

    My most recent concerns regarding accessibility are not related to physical disabilities but accessibility of technology. The need to move to online classes in the Spring made it difficult for our students without home wifi. Some would visit with neighbors or relatives and I know some who sat in the school parking lot to use the wifi. I was impressed with how some found solutions but couldn't help but recognize what a disadvantage compared to the student able to work in their own homes.

    PS - love the People Mover but may never ride again without thinking about this :)

    ReplyDelete

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