learning - Academic Conferences Limited

A Methodology for Incorporating Usability and
Accessibility Evaluations in Higher Education
Anne Jelfs and Chetz Colwell
Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
a.e.jelfs@open.ac.uk
c.colwell@open.ac.uk
Abstract: Digital academic resources are rapidly growing in number and range of content, including visual as
well as text based materials. To access these resources in a timely and effective way necessitates an easy to
use and easy to learn environment. We consider in this paper the needs and requirements of disabled as well as
non-disabled students who use these resources for study-related activities. We are currently involved in
evidence-based research at the Open University on the uptake of usability, accessibility and learnability in the
resource development cycle. To gain feedback from students we use a number of qualitative research methods
primarily through interviews and observation studies and in our evaluations we unite disabled and non-disabled
student user experience for final reports to faculties and developers The aim is to develop best practice with
guidelines and information to support the institution in its development of web-based provision. At the Open
University we have nearly 12,000 students with a declared disability, so ensuring the accessibility of course
materials and websites is of primary concern as a large proportion of our provision is mediated online. However,
we also need to retain the usability of resources because of the large non-disabled student population (approx
180,000 post graduate and undergraduate students). Therefore we collaborate together to ensure that
differences in usability and accessibility feedback are acknowledged and potential conflicts are part of the
evidence we use when reporting to Module Teams and developers. What we are able to demonstrate in our
paper is the ability to include multiple forms of evaluation including ‘expert’ walk throughs and the use of different
assistive technologies, and end user evaluations. We report on further developments of the methodology
developed by Colwell and Jelfs (2005; 2007) which is thought to be unique in ensuring that potential conflicts
between usability and accessibility are minimised. In our paper we will present recent Open University
developments to illustrate our methodology.
Keywords: accessibility, usability, evaluation
1. Introduction
There has been increased use and development of information technology as a tool to disseminate
teaching and learning across the world. The Internet has become a part of many people’s daily lives,
which in turn has led to the development of educational materials for presentation on the ‘web’ and
increasingly courses and universities are integrating online materials in their face-to-face teaching
(Crowther, Keller & Waddoups 2004; Kelly, Phipps & Swift 2004; HEFCE 2010). For many students
and teaching staff their first experience of eLearning is through their institution’s virtual learning
environment (VLE) which provides online teaching materials, university communities, assessment and
other university specific activities. It is often seen that web-based or university based intranet
resources can be one way to increase student access to materials and potentially to widen access to
a new and increasingly diverse student cohort. More recent studies have shown that technology has
become an ubiquitous and integral part of students’ lives (Jefferies & Hyde, 2009). However, this
potentially changes the emphasis from paper-based course materials and student support to online
provision of these key features of a university.
In this paper we discuss our work at the Open University (OU) which is Europe’s largest educational
establishment, delivering mainly distance learning modules. The OU has provided distance education
since the early 1970s and has a strong commitment to eLearning. The OU currently has 180,000
active students, of which over 11,000 declare a disability (~ 5.5%). Approximately one-half of all
disabled students receive some form of support from the university to enable them to participate in
their studies, for example providing audio files instead of text or software support through the
Disabled Student Allowance. The OU has also made extensive investment in eLearning particularly
since the late1990s for all students and there is a current major development programme for our VLE.
The OU also has a commitment to widening access to higher education, to providing high-quality,
interactive educational materials that meet students’ needs and operating within the mission of
‘openness to all’. The OU is committed to making its online educational content and student services
accessible to disabled students and usable by all; a considerable challenge given the size of the OU
student population (Cooper, Colwell & Jelfs 2007). Although we are reporting here on our work in
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