Blog #2 Universal Design in Education

The history of universal design is not a long history.  According to the National Parks Service article on the Disabilities Movement, it was not until the latter part of the 20th century when there were multiple disability laws passed and different court cases that protected the rights of people with disability (Disability History, 2017). These laws paved the way for to promote social inclusion and prevent discrimination. That began to put pressure on the design industry to meet the demands of creating accessible and usable products for everyone.  This paved the way for the universal design of websites that has become an industry standard.

Universal Design incorporates seven main principles.  According to the National Disability Association, the universal design was created by a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers (NDA).  The 7 Principles of Universal Design were developed in 1997 to guide the design of different products and communications (The Seven Principles, 2014).

The principles are the following:

•    Principle 1: Equitable Use

•    Principle 2: Flexibility in Use

•    Principle 3: Simple and Intuitive Use

•    Principle 4: Perceptible Information

•    Principle 5: Tolerance for Error

•    Principle 6: Low Physical Effort

•    Principle 7: Size and Space for Approach and Use

According to Steve Krug the author of Don’t Make Me Think if you want a great site you have to test the site.  Testing “reminds you that not everyone thinks the way you do or knows what you know” (Krug, 2014).  Usability tests can help you find missing information, confusing information, broken links, and a variety of other items.  All of these items may seem minor to a site creator, but we need to incorporate all of our audience.  This can be quickly done by integrating the seven principles into all the aspects of design.

In the education field, I will have a wide variety of students in my classroom.  This includes that may be blind or have low vision.  Those students will have assistive technology to help them navigate through daily task most people may take for graduated.  This includes devices such as a screen reader.  This a “software program used to allow reading of content and navigation of the screen using speech or Braille output” (Glossary, 2013).  Screen readers fulfill all the principles of universal design by being flexible, simple to use with low physical effort. This was the biggest surprise to me was that there is a screen reader already installed on all Mac computers and it is super simple to use. This feature is fascinating, and I have spent a lot of time using it on multiple websites.

When I am a teacher, I need to take into account the websites, articles, textbooks, labs, and other resources I use to make sure that they are usable for all students in the class.  To ensure that the content is used for most students in the class I can provide a wide variety of ways for the students to access the information.  For example, I can create a screencast for students that may have low vision.  I can share a typed copy of the class notes for a student that is deaf.  While these aspects may be for people with disabilities they can help all users experience in the class.  A screencast of the past lessons and typed notes can help students that have been absent, are struggling or those that just need an extra review.  This follows all the principles of universal design as it is available for anyone to access and is easy to use.

The final area of usability that I found interesting was the alt text.  Alt test is “short text used described images---usually 125 characters or less” (Glossary, 2013). While I had used numerous and seen numerous examples of alt-text before I was never really sure what it was or what the purpose of it was.  After learning more about user experience I know that this is especially important when using screen readers need alt texts.  Also, if any user has slow or unstable connections, it can act as a fallback if the image path is broken.  This is usually an aspect that is commonly overlooked and should be improved, and I think it continued as time goes on.

References

Disability History: The Disability Rights Movement (U.S. National Park

Service).(2017, December 1). Retrieved February 27, 2019, fromhttps://www.nps.gov/articles/disabilityhistoryrightsmovement.htm

Krug, S. (2014). Dont make me think, revisited: A common sense approach to Web usability. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub.

Glossary. (2013, June 07). Retrieved from https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/glossary/a/index.html

The 7 Principles. (2014). Retrieved February 27, 2019, from

http://universaldesign.ie/What-is-Universal-Design/The-7-Principles/#p2