XERTE Digital Literacies and Accessibility

Sue WatlingCentre for Educational Research and Development

forMaking Digital History

http://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/

XERTE and Accessibility

• Digital resources are double edged; they can both enable and disable access.

• Designers of digital content often unaware of the diversity of digital access

• Accessibility, or inclusive practice, are important elements of digital literacies

• Xerte offers useful introduction to the principles of accessibility and the user experience for example….

• Using the Properties option to display Xerte learning object in Flash mode

• Avoiding text over images• Alt text on images • Providing alternatives to multimedia

(for example subtitles, captions and transcripts)

Xerte is also an opportunity to discuss

Xerte is an opportunity to discuss:

• Avoiding text over images• Providing Alt text on images • Having alternatives to multimedia (e.g.

subtitles, captions and transcripts) • Not relying on YouTube automatic

captioning!• The benefits of inclusive practice

Further guidance on accessibility

• Jisc TechDis http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/ • Accessibility Essentials Series – Making Electronic Documents More Readable;– Writing Accessible Electronic Documents;– Creating Accessible Presentations; and– Making the Most of PDFs.

• More about Xerte http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/technologymatters/Xerte

• Contact Sue Watling swatling@lincoln.ac.uk