Clive,
Unfortunately, I think that you will find that the changes in the
disability act that come into force in September 2002!!!
(http://www.techdis.ac.uk) are going to severely limit the easy solutions to
content production. For most academic staff producing content in Word or
PowerPoint (or some other similar proprietary software package) and hitting
the convert to html button (with some guidelines and stylesheets) would be
the easiest way forward in the short term. (N.B. I am making no assumptions
about the quality of the content thus produced. This is merely a reflection
on the ease of conversion from the proprietary software to a platform
independent (html) format.)
However, at least in the case of Word and PowerPoint the code that
they produce (even the latest versions) does not meet the minimum standards
as recommended by W3C (see http://www.w3.org/WAI) with respect to
accessibility; and from September we are legally (and ethically/morally
anyway) obliged to meet these standards. I suspect (but am NOT sure) that
Word and PowerPoint documents may actually be intrinsically more
'accessible' than the html derivatives that those systems produce. However,
that leaves you stuck with the fact that you can't guarantee that all end
users will share your software preferences.
In the short term, I suspect that we all have no choice but to
produce WAI compatible CSS stylesheets, guidelines for their use and
training in a some html editor for staff who are going to produce material
for inclusion in Blackboard or elsewhere. This is actually less challenging
than it sounds. JISC (http://www.techdis.ac.uk) has produced, and others
(like us) are producing, such guidelines and will I'm sure be willing to
share best practice as it emerges. Nonetheless, there are clearly staff
development and software license implications for moving to web distributed
resources.
However, please note the accessibility issues are nothing to do with
Blackboard, we will have to meet these standards whatever online resource
distribution and management systems we use.
Regards,
Bruce
Bruce Douglas Ingraham, ILTM
Teaching Fellow &
Open & Distance Learning Policy Manager
Centre for Lifelong Learning
University of Teesside
Middlesbrough
United Kingdom
tel. 44 (0)1642 384260
fax 44 (0)1642 342293
email [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Clive Richards [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 15 May 2002 22:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Easy Content Production
We are running Blackboard as a medium term pilot - we do not have any kind
of content production unit, nor at the moment do we have the funding to set
one up.
I am trying to compile information about software which which enables
lecturers to produce more professional looking content without being too
complex or involving a long learning curve.
I know that it is possible to use things like Flash, Dreamweaver but these
are not tools for the faint hearted. I picked up the Impatica for
Powerpoint solution through these pages and wonder if other people have
found other packages equally easy to use?
If you copy your replies direct to me as well as to the list I will be
happy to create a web page with information about anything that looks useful
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