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Pima Community College: Creating Accessible Online Math Courses
6/27/2003
Challenges
One of the first problems encountered was to determine what convention to use
in the alt tags for mathematical operations because, according to Lamar, "There
are no industry-wide standards for mathematicians."
Content in the advanced math course crossed many topics with a variety of math symbols. Stanley initially encountered standards difficulties in using Mathspeak, a language increasingly used by university mathematicians for interpreters for the blind. Eventually, he found that with a little tweaking he was able to effectively use that software. For the developmental course, however, Lamar says, "We had to consider learning styles of developmental learners. We needed to allow plenty of places for them to practice, and we had to make learning engaging, so it wouldn't seem intimidating." So she chose another path: "I decided to put in what I thought an instructor might say, as opposed to using the coded Mathspeak format. Developmental students don't need any extra step to memorize."
Another challenge was encountered in the pre-existing pre-algebra course. Designed to hold the attention of developmental learners, it included multiple animation files. When the PCC team attempted to create accessible components from the animations, it encountered "legacy" problems—especially with files constructed in layers. But with Flash MX, the team was able to create a workaround: They discovered they could add alt tags to animation files by using a unique file extension format (.swf versus the more common .fla) to solve delivery and download challenges.
Functionality
"The software has usability functions that allow accessibility shortcuts
to let us skip repetitive steps or redundant information when we access the
content through screen readers," says Lamar. The Macromedia Studio MX Suite
applications include embedded options to enable keyboard accessibility, increase
the font size to make panel and dialog fonts easier to read at higher resolutions,
and support the usability of screen readers.
One of the greatest advantages of the project, says Lamar, is that, "Although instructional designers are known to complain that design suffers when access has to be considered, the Web developers on our staff loved using the MX Suite."
Team members also learned how to use free accessibility resources and software plug-ins, including a captioning tool for Flash files available from the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM: http://ncam.wgbh.org/), as well as online validation tools, such as a site that checks pages for colorblind users. References to this information are available online by searching "accessibility" at www.macromedia.com.
PCC is implementing both math courses in Spring and Summer 2003, with visually impaired students validating course content and presentation.
Chris Lamar (chris.lamar@pima.edu) is Director of Telecommunications and Production Services at Pima Community College, in Tucson, Ariz. For more information on accessibility and on MAP in particular, visit www.macromedia.com/accessibility.
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