[Athen] Accessibiilty and SoftChalk 6

Hadi Rangin hadi at illinois.edu
Thu Nov 4 08:43:29 PDT 2010


Hi Susanne,

Marc Thompson and I looked into the accessibility of Softchalk as an application and pages that it creates a few week ago and we were impressed with it. It does not mean that it is fully accessible or it creates perfect accessible content but I see a great potential in the program to become more accessible and create more usable/accessible content.

For those of you who worked with me in the past you already know that I don't get easily excited about a few accessibility features here or there but indeed I think Softchalk is on the right path.
Softchalk has approached me and I guess at least one other colleague in other institution to work with them collaboratively to improve the accessibility of their product but since we are not using their product here at UIUC I was a little hesitant to start the collaboration group.
If there is enough interest and more importantly there are a few people who can commit to work on improving Softchalk I will be glad to establish the collaboration group and work with them to improve the accessibility/usability of their product.

Are you personally interested to work on such collaboration group and/or do you know other colleagues who are interested to dedicate a few hours in a month for such collaboration project?

Thanks,
Hadi

----- Original Message -----
From: Susanne Mistric
To: athen at athenpro.org
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 10:03 AM
Subject: [Athen] Accessibiilty and SoftChalk 6


Our campus has a Soft Chalk 6 site license. As Accessibility specialist/trainer, I'm questioning the accessibility of the "accessible" options available within the product and any of the third party widgets that I've explored as optional resources for instructors to implement. I'm just not seeing it as being as accessible across the board as it's made out to be. I'm interested in the input of others who have used, are using, or who have evaluated the product as a tool for the creation of accessible course content. I'd actually love to find that my skepticism is off track, because it is a tool that is easy for our instructors to use. Thank you and I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can at the upcoming Higher Ground conference in Colorado.

Susanne Van Dorpe Mistric



Blackboard Student Support
Access-Ability Advocate/Trainer
Distance Education Academic Support Services
Wake Technical Community College

svmistric at waketech.edu
(919)866-5631



“The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
Sir Tim Berners-Lee


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