About the Project
The Internet has a lot to offer everyone including people with disabilities. It is a place where independence can be achieved and lives enriched if web technologies are built with ALL people in mind. Imagine for a moment that you could not use the Internet? What would you do? Does your job depend on it? Would your relationships with friends and family suffer? How would your world be different if the Internet was not available to you but you knew it had all the potential to connect you to opportunities at the speed of broad band?
This project came about when CANnect, a nonprofit consortium, decided to raise the awareness of just how unfriendly the Internet can be for people with disabilities, in particular, people with vision loss. CANnect members are educators in blindness so a logical place to begin was to explore the world of online learning. If you are blind or visually impaired, the chances of you successfully completing an online course without a sighted guide is nearly impossible. CANnect believes this is unacceptable especially when technology could be the great equalizer.
CANnect asked the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to help with exploring the topic of accessibility and usability of online learning. They generously agreed to provide the funding to underwrite this project as well as another project that explores the Moodle learning management system and determines what it would take to make it a great learning experience for students with disabilities. And finally, through a partnership with the Sloan Consortium, this content will be re-purposed into workshops and articles to help raise the awareness of the higher ed community as to the importance of including people with disabilities in the discussion when courses are created and delivered via the Internet.
The approach we took was to see the possibilities through the concepts of Universal Design and how they can be applied in the creation of educational content. Next, we wanted to provide a practical guide for Best Practices that clearly recommended techniques to help instructors and course designers create more usable and accessible content. We sincerely hope you find this work enlightening and helpful.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the helpful advice and suggested improvements given by Norman Coombs, Professor Emeritus, Rochester Institute of Technology and CEO of EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information) during this project. Ken Petri, the Accessibility Specialist at Ohio State University not only revised and improved the content but he created the template to manage and display the content including snapshots of examples for the Best Practices. The author also thanks Cheryl Edmonds, CANnect Executive Director for her constant support and contributions in all aspects of this project.
Thanks are also due to the many people who reviewed the draft manuscript and gave feedback which helped to correct errors and polish the final document.
And finally, a special thanks goes to Mahnaz and Niki (author wife and daughter) for their patience and visual help during this project.
About the Author
Hadi Rangin received his degree in Network Management (Computer Science) from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany and a masters degree in Human-Computer Interfaces (Computer Science) from Oregon State University.
He was one of the pilot students who enrolled in SZS (Studienzentrum fuer Blinde und Sehgeschaedigte) project in 1988 that allowed blind and visually impaired students to study computer science, math and other technical subjects as a mainstream higher education student.
In 1994, he joined Dr. John Gardner Science Access Project at Oregon State University. Later, he moved to the telecommunications industry and worked from 1999 through 2001 for Telemedia Networks USA.
He established his accessibility consulting company called EveryoneConnected.net in 2001 and provided accessibility consulting services to local agencies and entities.
Since 2004, he has been working for the University of Illinois with Dr. Jon Gunderson as their Web Design and Accessibility Specialist. His primary responsibility is to improve the accessibility of online resources used by the University of Illinois.
At his current position, he has worked with many vendors from the higher education system and helps them to integrate accessibility into their product design processes. He is also an active member of Web Best Practices and DHTML Style Guide groups.
He provides accessibility consulting services privately to companies and organizations nation-wide as well as via OJC Technology and EASI. He also trains blind people on how to use their assistive software and hardware to improve their productivity and become more independent in their lives.