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Alignment with Accessibility Standards

Andrew Sears

December 11, 2018 20:14

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The US Department of Education is starting to put inspect schools that receive federal aid to ensure that they are compliant with the ADA act and accessibility standards. 

Since Populi provides an LMS, it would be helpful to have some formal documentation for Populi's compliance with some of these standards such as WCAG 2.0.

Basically, something like what other LMS providers offer would be helpful. See:

• https://docs.moodle.org/36/en/Accessibility (more details at: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Accessibility)
• https://www.blackboard.com/accessibility.html
• https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2061-accessibility-within-canvas

 

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6 comments

• 
  Adam Sentz March 25, 2024 19:29 Official comment

  Our VPAT is available here: Accessibility In Populi

  Edited by Adam Sentz March 25, 2024 19:30
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  Evan Donovan November 01, 2019 14:41

  One specific way in which this could be adjusted would be not to use red for alert text, but instead a color that would be differentiable for people who are colorblind.
  
  We have at least one professor who can't see the alert text as different on screens (like Gradebook or Dashboard) because of being colorblind.
  
  Here is a summary of WCAG 2.1: https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/glance/
  
  See the following article regarding 50 colleges recently being sued for failure to comply with accessibility: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/10/fifty-colleges-sued-barrage-ada-lawsuits-over-web-accessibility
  
  I know this is a challenging area to work in, but we appreciate your consideration.

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  Adam Sentz November 01, 2019 17:54

  Evan Donovan - In general we try to avoid using color alone to convey meaning. I'm not sure what red alert text you're referring to. For example, I don't believe there's any red text used on the grade book. Red text is used pretty seldom, and when it is we make sure it has a minimum contrast ratio that complies with WCAG. 

  If anyone has specific issues please encourage them to reach out in a support request. We do accessibility testing, but Populi is such a broad system that it's hard to catch or anticipate every issue that might arise. If people give us a heads up on what isn't working for them it'll help us know where to put our efforts.

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  Lucy Wolski March 25, 2024 18:02

  I agree that documentation would be great here. I'm looking for student-centric documentation, because in my course design I always share accessibility and privacy policies. This is all I could find: https://support.populiweb.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024282254-Accessibility-in-Populi but what I want is something like https://www.mheducation.com/highered/explore/accessibility.html

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  Adam Sentz March 25, 2024 19:36

  Lucy Wolski - It seems like it would still be appropriate for you to include your accessibility policy as part of your course design in regards to the accessibility of your course content. While Populi's tools can contribute to the accessibility of your content, Populi can't really say whether or not user-generated content complies with any standard. This kind of goes over the (kind of blurry) line from Populi's accessibility to Populi-users into your school's accessibility to your students. 

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  Lucy Wolski March 25, 2024 19:41

  Adam Sentz Thank you but I meant sharing the accessibility and privacy policies of the education technology. Good point about including institution accessibility policy, but that's separate to the education technology, both LMS and third-party integrations. 

  Edited by Lucy Wolski March 25, 2024 19:42