Section 508 Blues

Technology is amazing. When it comes to online training, I am impressed with what a good programmer can do. I have both produced and taken online training in various forms, and I love it when I really get the subject matter. Programmers use lots of techniques and media to make training engaging, like interactivity, video, audio, branching paths, cool graphics and animations. True, some of it can be just eye candy, but a good instructional designer will employ multimedia to give learners further insight. Giving a high-level learning experience is so valuable, I sometimes wonder why federal government trainers do anything else. Then I remember -- Section 508.

In case you don't know, Section 508 of the Americans With Disabilities Act "... requires that Federal agencies' electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities," according to www.section508.gov. What does this mean? Nobody seems to really know, because its broad interpretation leaves a lot of leeway. The spirit of the law, however, is pretty easy to understand: make the experience of a disabled individual as close as possible to that of someone who isn't disabled.

With that in mind, it's time to make all that interactivity and media accessible. Sounds pretty simple in theory, doesn't it? In practice, unfortunately, development tools like Flash provide only the most rudimentary accessibility support. Sure, it's easy enough to provide tab navigation to people who use interface devices other than a mouse, and providing captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing isn't that hard, either, though it takes some time. Section 508 for the blind, though, is a real challenge.

Out-of-the-box navigation objects and media containers just aren't built to work well with screen reader programs like JAWS. Online, screen readers want to examine every piece of content, regardless of its relevance. They aren't bright enough to know that a background graphic isn't as important as a lesson title. We have to tell screen readers what's important with good programming, and that takes lots of time and skill.

So why bother? We have other options. Maybe we can just make a website with no graphics or interactivity at all. That's pretty easy to make 508 compliant. The only problem is we've just fallen off the training wagon into a big pile of "information." If we can't do a little simulation, coaching, or interaction, it's hard to know whether learners can apply what we're trying to teach them.

Maybe we can just provide a "text equivalent," which is a transcript of the online course. It's a technical out but doesn't conform to the spirit of the law in any way. People who use the transcript will only be told, not trained.

It looks like we're stuck with providing a rich, valuable learning experience for everyone, regardless of disabilities. That means we have to make those custom interface controls, provide narration, and describe buttons, graphics, and animation. We will use a screen reader like JAWS to test our work. We will try to get as close to the same experience as we can with the resources we have. We want to train everyone, don't we?