UKAAF Ideas

Idea - FE Colleges: Stroud/Worcester/Solihull- BLC?

Survey:

Do you make any form of digital content and how often

Have you ever heard of the WCAG guidelines for web accessibility 

Without searching google what do you understand by the term digital accessibility 

Subject area studying - to sift out computing students 

Whose responsibility is it to make digital content accessible so it works for users on assistive technology and screen readers

Do you know, or have you ever been taught how to make content that works for people on assistive technology or screen readers

Create bite-sized information for GAAD - May 2024

Notes: ##

We need to get more of our society learning some basic principles, right from school age to inform our next generation, all the way through to those everyday practices of those who generate digital content everyday in their workplace. Imagine the impact of that.

At UKAAF we are keen to develop our guidance in everyday content creation to support a bite-sized approach to make learning around the basic principles easier. We have suggested this as a board as an approach across the range of our guidance, so as well as our comprehensive documentation we aim to offer bite-size too.

Consider digital accessibility guidance broken down into bite size chunks making it easier to learn about those everyday low hanging fruit principles bit by bit, perfect for people who are busy or need learning on the go and those who are beginners. 

Imagine the school pupil learning specifically about the importance of adding headings and styles and then being able to apply them to everything they do from there on in, something very missing in many of today’s digital digital documents because people are just not aware. Breaking it down bit by bit offers easier ways to integrate it into learning for everyone. Each of these principles making a difference bit by bit.

Before we embark on rethinking and adding to our guidance for this bite sized approach we are keen to know what these basics could be, and what else we might include for this type of guidance to be useful to address a range of accessibility principles, and meet a range of people needs who want to start learning some useful bite sized lifelong skills for accessible content creation.

Now, Considering that school age audience, what would be ideal for them, to help young people learn so we could kick start our next generation to adopt these principles. Everyone needs to start their accessibility learning journey somewhere and we at UKAAF are keen to support this to get some momentum going. Everyone needs to start somewhere, but at least they would start, and every little helps, and every little bit more keeps the momentum going.

Coming back to ‘what ten things’. What basics would you nominate at the most important top ten principles we could begin to develop and try out, to kick start this journey, to evolve our guidance and help us pilot this new bite sized approach. What basics if adopted could make a big impact, those basic principles that would also be ideal for beginners at any age, including schools.

*And those establishing lifelong knowledge and skills at school 

We all know that some the basics can make a real difference to many people, things like having headings, descriptive links, good colour contrast or captions on videos, to some can mean the difference between being able to use digital content or being completely excluded, and we at UKAAF are interested in focusing on supporting guidance around these types of fundamentals as key skills that everyone should know about and learn. 

These types of things really we should be establishing as the norm in the mainstream in today’s world, but often they are not, and as a starting point, we need to get these on everyone’s radar, because so many people out there are just not aware of these or the difference some of these simple principles can make.

Of course these basics don’t make content fully accessible, we know we have other comprehensive standards for that, but not having them applied at all, or people just not being aware is a huge barrier to progress.


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