Deirdre Bonnycastle

You are right, I wasn't including learning disabilities. The university has had students with learning disabilities taking online courses. I was referring to students with visual, auditory or physical issues that need W3C accessible courses. I've been out of the loop for several years and learning disabilities may now be included in those standards. Of course, some accessibility tools such as page readers apply to LD students.

My favourite high school LD story is a student who had a scribe for exams but wasn't allowed to use the scribe for computer-based exams because all the students had to be in the same computer room at the same time and talking wasn't allowed.

I'm Deirdre Bonnycastle. I was an instructional designer at the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />University of Saskatchewan and I'm going to play the devil's advocate here. Five years ago, I did extensive research into online course accessibility and we came up with some minimum standards and did various training sessions. http://www.extension.usask.ca/extensionDivision/about/accessibility/index.html<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

We spend a lot of money making online courses accessible and in 5 years of a hundred courses per year, we never had a student with a disability register. All that work we did is now out of date. In the end, it would have been cheaper to wait for a student and make the necessary changes then.

This comment doesn’t apply to the university website which is more public and has its own accessibility team.

You are right, I wasn't including learning disabilities. The university has had students with learning disabilities taking online courses. I was referring to students with visual, auditory or physical issues that need W3C accessible courses. I've been out of the loop for several years and learning disabilities may now be included in those standards. Of course, some accessibility tools such as page readers apply to LD students.

My favourite high school LD story is a student who had a scribe for exams but wasn't allowed to use the scribe for computer-based exams because all the students had to be in the same computer room at the same time and talking wasn't allowed.

I'm Deirdre Bonnycastle. I was an instructional designer at the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />University of Saskatchewan and I'm going to play the devil's advocate here. Five years ago, I did extensive research into online course accessibility and we came up with some minimum standards and did various training sessions. http://www.extension.usask.ca/extensionDivision/about/accessibility/index.html<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

We spend a lot of money making online courses accessible and in 5 years of a hundred courses per year, we never had a student with a disability register. All that work we did is now out of date. In the end, it would have been cheaper to wait for a student and make the necessary changes then.

This comment doesn’t apply to the university website which is more public and has its own accessibility team.

I worked a lot with Aboriginal peoples in the past and there is an assumption that oral tradition=auditory learners=podcast/lecture. It doesn't quite work that way. The oral tradition of most aboriginal cultures tell visual stories in a hypnotic way that captures visual/emotional imagination.