While not exactly an online course this simulation is a valuable learning experience for anyone involved in producing online material.

This screen reader simulator comes from WebAIM – Web Accessibility in Mind, an organisation funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Their goal is to improve accessibility to online learning opportunities for all people, particularly those with disabilities.

A screen reader is a program used by visually impaired people to read web pages. This simulation is designed to give sighted people an idea of what it is like navigating a web site using a screen reader – and more particularly, a site containing common accessibility bloopers.

The site is for the fictional University of Antarctica (Learning like the penguins…) and you can see what it looks like - http://www.webaim.org/uofa/ - before trying to use it with the screen reader simulation. It’s a pretty average, slightly daggy website that is relatively easy to get around.

The simulation provides a black screen listing keyboard shortcuts, which you use to navigate the site, as well as a set of three tasks that you’re challenged to complete.

The tasks seem easy enough:

1. Find the last name of the founder of U of A
2. Find the phone number of U of A
3. Find the current enrolment for the Bio 250 class.

When I entered the home page and the robotic voice started reading this is what I was confronted with –

“University of the Antarctic home table with three columns in seven rows link graphic link for prospective students link graphic number nine hundred sixty five billion one hundred fifty one million four hundred eighty one thousand nine hundred fifty link graphic number nine hundred sixty five billion one hundred fifty one million …”

It took me about 40 minutes to get totally fed up trying to find the answer to just the first task (I would not have persevered except for having to write this review!). Eventually I went to the other site (the one you could see) to find the answer. It took me about 4 seconds to find what I was after (click “History” and the answer is in the first sentence).

I went back with this cheater’s knowledge and tried again. When the reader finally got to the bottom menu (“link news vertical bar link calendar vertical bar link campus diversity vertical bar link survival classes vertical bar link things to do vertical bar link apply vertical bar link library vertical bar link history vertical bar…”) I pressed enter as I heard “link history” and was taken to the Campus History page. This can be experienced as either -

or

“campus history link graphic link to u of a homepage imagemap link u of a slash search imagemap link to site index image map link to information about u of a the beginning in nineteen eighty two Freidrick Coldman was snow camping in the mountains of Colorado….”

I needed a clue from the “viewable” site before I could complete the second task and gave up completely on the third.

Some accessibility problems are easily avoided and, as they say, accessible design is good design – for everyone! To find out more about making your website accessible try WebAIM’s tutorials or check out the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

You will need Shockwave Player to use the simulation. There are captions and audio to make the simulation itself more accessible. But WebAIM do recognise “… that certain disability types (such as those who are both deaf and blind) may not be able to fully access the simulation. These individuals probably don't need to, though, since we are attempting to simulate something that they are probably already quite familiar with!”

All in all this simulation is a great way to really understand what people are talking about when they tell you how important accessibility is.