8-1 Navigation and Accessibility

Navigation is an area where it’s especially helpful to have someone from the target audience test out the program prior to launch to help identify flaws or inconsistencies. While navigation seems like a straightforward concept, time and time again we see e-learning courses that get it wrong.

It’s also important to consider whether your course navigation elements are accessible to learners with visual, auditory, motor, and/or cognitive impairments. These learners use adaptive technologies, such as screen readers that read Web pages aloud, so content needs to be formatted to work for these technologies. At the most basic level:

• Transcripts or closed captioning of audio and video files should be provided for users with hearing impairment
• Alt-text or some other method should be used to provide text descriptions of images for those with visual impairment using a screen reader
• Navigation elements should be predictable and consistently labeled
• Information should be chunked to assist people with cognitive impairments
• Graphical organizers and labels (such as headings) should be used to indicate the structure of a site or document
• Using purely visual characteristics to communicate information (e.g., “click inside the circle” or “required fields are in red”) should be avoided

Course components for interactivity should also be considered. For example, audio conferences are a problem for the hearing-impaired, and people with impaired motor skills may have difficulty keeping up in an online chat. Make sure these kinds of issues are considered during design and development.

Here are some additional links about navigation and designing for accessibility:

1. Matt Cronin, Feb 2009. 50 Beautiful and User-Friendly Navigation Menus
2. UWIT’s Accessibility Checklist
3. W3C’s Accessibility Checklist
4. Alex Zaharenkov, October 2020. Choosing the Right Font and Its Presentation: A Key to ADA Accessible Websites

Accessibility Checkers

In the age of increased attention on accessibility, it is also easy to install resources to check accessibility both on the web and in general computer use:

• NVDA – Free, open source, globally accessible screen reader. Download it to at least try it out.
• axe DevTools – Web Accessibility Testing – browser extension for Chrome from the folks at Deque known for their digital accessibility products and services.
• WAVE Web accessibility evaluation tool – very thorough checker with browser extensions available.
• PowerMapper Accessibility Checker and Validator – Give it a website address to check.
  • Assistive Technology Compatibility Tests – Check out the compatibility by HTML element.