I'd be very interested in how you've been able to achieve 508 AND SCORM compliance with a Flash presentation. What authoring program are you using?
Christie Mason
Christie Mason
Posts made by Christie Mason
I'm seeing comments regarding specific challenges of creating accessible online presentations, by product and process, buried in the introductions and thought it would be useful to begin a new thread to identify those challenges and collect practical suggestions on how to avoid those challenges.
I view the training and educational industry standards, SCORM etc, as anti-accessible. Most (all?) of the online authoring programs used by the training/educational (T & E) industries appear to continue to ignore accessibility issues, even though it's been a core focus of the web design community for years.
I wish I'd seen more web designers attracted to this discussion because, until AJAX, the concepts of making the web more usable had a strong alignment with making the web more accessible. Yes, the web design community did have "Flash Fever" for a while but that's long gone, except in T & E presentations. Web designers didn't stop using Flash and frames all the time for everything because of accessibility issues; they stopped because of pragmatic usability issues. If someone can’t use a page, understand how to navigate to that page, then that page has failed.
Try doing a "view source" on the page you're forced to use to enter a new topic (if you're like me and have trouble finding it then click on this link http://tinyurl.com/ymmgrx,). How does this page adher to or ignore accessibility issues? What's useful and not useful on this page and with the overall process? Look at the HTML source of this email, there’s not an alt attribute for the image (notice this is not an “alt tag” issue, “image” is the tag, “alt” is an attribute). CSS is used but so are tables and embedded font styles along with deprecated tags. Web standardistas would quibble about the links that open a new window but I think they're appropriate because some read their email in a browser.
I'd be very interested in how you've been able to achieve 508 AND SCORM compliance with a Flash presentation. What authoring program are you using?
Christie Mason
Christie Mason
Yes, IT does have it's more than fair share of acronyms (ASP has several definitions) but it is situations where T & E acronyms reuse and redefine tech acronyms and concepts that causes me problems.
I remember when I first started hearing about LCMS and "assumed" it was CMS (Content Management System) with Learner or Learning stuck in front of it. Wrong, initially it stood for Learning COURSE Management System. Although somenow define them as Learning CONTENT, conceptually they're still structured as COURSE Management. Managing courses is about managing content but managing content is NOT about managing courses. The process of managing content for learning is, should be, no different than managing content for other uses so why attempt to conceptually segregate it?
I'm not sure if knowing the terms behind tech acronyms is helpful (Google for "define:TCP/IP" or "define:ASP"). I've found it better to understand the concepts and learn which term/acronyms people use to refer to those concepts in different environments. Sometimes the same term means different things in different environments sometimes different terms mean the same things. It's just like moving to any new environment, it's up to those that are new to the environment to understand the established culture and language.
Christie Mason
I remember when I first started hearing about LCMS and "assumed" it was CMS (Content Management System) with Learner or Learning stuck in front of it. Wrong, initially it stood for Learning COURSE Management System. Although somenow define them as Learning CONTENT, conceptually they're still structured as COURSE Management. Managing courses is about managing content but managing content is NOT about managing courses. The process of managing content for learning is, should be, no different than managing content for other uses so why attempt to conceptually segregate it?
I'm not sure if knowing the terms behind tech acronyms is helpful (Google for "define:TCP/IP" or "define:ASP"). I've found it better to understand the concepts and learn which term/acronyms people use to refer to those concepts in different environments. Sometimes the same term means different things in different environments sometimes different terms mean the same things. It's just like moving to any new environment, it's up to those that are new to the environment to understand the established culture and language.
Christie Mason
Yes, IT does have it's more than fair share of acronyms (ASP has several definitions) but it is situations where T & E acronyms reuse and redefine tech acronyms and concepts that causes me problems.
I remember when I first started hearing about LCMS and "assumed" it was CMS (Content Management System) with Learner or Learning stuck in front of it. Wrong, initially it stood for Learning COURSE Management System. Although somenow define them as Learning CONTENT, conceptually they're still structured as COURSE Management. Managing courses is about managing content but managing content is NOT about managing courses. The process of managing content for learning is, should be, no different than managing content for other uses so why attempt to conceptually segregate it?
I'm not sure if knowing the terms behind tech acronyms is helpful (Google for "define:TCP/IP" or "define:ASP"). I've found it better to understand the concepts and learn which term/acronyms people use to refer to those concepts in different environments. Sometimes the same term means different things in different environments sometimes different terms mean the same things. It's just like moving to any new environment, it's up to those that are new to the environment to understand the established culture and language.
Christie Mason
I remember when I first started hearing about LCMS and "assumed" it was CMS (Content Management System) with Learner or Learning stuck in front of it. Wrong, initially it stood for Learning COURSE Management System. Although somenow define them as Learning CONTENT, conceptually they're still structured as COURSE Management. Managing courses is about managing content but managing content is NOT about managing courses. The process of managing content for learning is, should be, no different than managing content for other uses so why attempt to conceptually segregate it?
I'm not sure if knowing the terms behind tech acronyms is helpful (Google for "define:TCP/IP" or "define:ASP"). I've found it better to understand the concepts and learn which term/acronyms people use to refer to those concepts in different environments. Sometimes the same term means different things in different environments sometimes different terms mean the same things. It's just like moving to any new environment, it's up to those that are new to the environment to understand the established culture and language.
Christie Mason