[Athen] ‘Glacial Progress’ on Digital Accessibility

[David Wisniewski]

> On May 19, 2017, at 11:30 AM, Jennifer Sutton <jsuttondc at gmail.com> wrote:

> 

> In case you've not seen this from Inside Higher Ed. It seems to be based on research via Blackboard/Ally.


Yes, based on 700,000 courses reviewed in Blackboard.

It is unfortunate that this was presented as a sweeping evaluation of the state of things.  Would one ask Microsoft to provide a summary of smartphone trends?  It seems that limiting scope to one provider and one system is hardly the way to evaluate progress.

That said, it is positive that the issue is even raised.  There are some good comments after the article.  One caught my eye, by user ‘Red Orville’:  "Try navigating a course in Bb Learn with a screen reader. When the LMS itself is hardly "accessible," it makes it hard for campuses to create truly accessible courses.”

It seems Blackboard as a platform for evaluation really was an interesting choice.

David