Defining accessible learning

- [Narrator] If someone is in a wheelchair, they would obviously have difficulty trying to get into a building that has steps to climb. For that reason, we build ramps to help ensure that they can enter. This is an easy to understand example of how we can make something more accessible. Once the ramp is there, the person in the wheelchair is now able to enter that building. In this course, we'll be talking about this same topic, but from the perspective of ensuring that everyone is able to access learning content. For example, if someone is unable to see, how will they be able to access your online learning content, or if they can't hear, how will they consume videos that you create? Simply put, accessible learning is the act of making sure that all of your learning resources and content are able to be accessed and used by everyone. That includes someone with a disability. I liked the way that the National Center on Accessible Education Material summarizes it, someone with a disability should be able to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services, the same way that someone without a disability should be able to, equally effective, equally integrated, with similar ease of use. Let's go back to my example of someone who is unable to enter a building because they were in a wheelchair. In that example, the ramp allowed them to enter. What about in the case of someone who's blind and trying to navigate your online learning material? See if you can complete this analogy. On the left here, we can see that the ramp helps someone in a wheelchair to get in the building the same way that blank helps the person who can't see be able to navigate content online. So, what's your guess on this? The correct answer is a screen reader, which is an assistive technology that allows people to navigate a site using keyboard commands and have information read out loud. It requires however that you set up your content correctly, which is an example of making learning accessible. And that's the point of this course, to take a look at how we can make all of our learning content accessible. This is a very important topic and one that I recommend you start learning more about. In this course we'll only scratch the surface as my goal is to introduce to you the what and the why of accessible learning, as well as show you some examples. Hopefully by the end, you'll have a better understanding of accessible learning and how it impacts the way that we create content.