The Practical "Bluffer's Guide" to Blackboard Theme Accessibility #BbWorld20
Watch the video:
Moderator's introduction 0:00
Matt's introduction 1:10
An exercise in colour 1:22
My Blackboard theme story 2:23
Agenda 4:04
Supporting website 4:32
About me 4:46
Getting started with theme customisation 5:57
Using my shared theme 8:58
COVID-19 and Digital Inclusion 11:18
Relevance to you and your students 11:51
Introducing WCAG 12:38
Colour and Contrast 16:22
Complexity 22:09
Course menus 23:30
Focus and Focus Indicators 26:20
Conclusion 29:16
Questions and Answers 31:35
-Q1: What led to your interest in accessibility? 32:04
-Q2: Is your practice replicated elsewhere at the University of Southampton? 33:32
-Q3: Can students change their theme? What about Ultra base navigation? 35:20
-Q4: If you could recommend one resource to those looking to get started in web accessibility, what would it be? 38:13
Final thoughts 39:31
About me
- Connect with me on LinkedIn.
- My blog
- @vleguru on twitter
- My profile on the Blackboard Community Site.
- My YouTube Channel
Synopsis
Relevant to: Blackboard Learn Original Experience. Self/Managed Hosted or SaaS deployment.
With the rapid move to online teaching in the current climate of COVID-19, ensuring equitable access to our learning environment has never been more important.
With the rapid move to online teaching in the current climate of COVID-19, ensuring equitable access to our learning environment has never been more important.
When we customise the Blackboard theme (original experience) to align it with our institutional colours, we must consider accessibility. Based on my own experience at the University of Southampton (in the UK) I will share practical lessons and recommendations, of how to ensure your theme customisation complies with web content accessibility guidelines.
I do recommend that you watch my earlier presentation "The Bluffer's Guide to Customising the Blackboard Responsive Theme" before attending: https://youtu.be/R7Apm_K2808 Doing so will help you to get the most out of this first "Bluffer's Guide" delivered at Bb World.
Presentation Files
Video Clips used during the presentation
- Preview of the Bluffer's Guide to Blackboard Theme Customisation
- Full version of the Bluffer's Guide to Blackboard Theme Customisation
- Demonstration of using Stylus with the shared theme.
- The Course Menu Workaround
Files and related posts
- Get my full set of theme files (from my blog).
- Get my full set of theme files (from the Blackboard Community site - requires login).
- JSHack to make course menus accessible when hovering and focussing.
JS Hack
Links from the presentation
If I had to pick one resource
During the presentation, Louise asked if I could pick one resource for someone wanting to start in accessibility what would I choose? My pick was 10 Days of a11y by Lindsey Kopacz.News items
- 'I hate COVID-19': Kids with disabilities struggle to adjust as schools close
- In The Middle of A Pandemic, COVID-19 Information Remains Inaccessible to Visually Impaired People
- People with disabilities will remember your words and actions when COVID-19 is over
- The 3 Biggest Remote Teaching Concerns We Need to Solve Now
- COVID-19 Highlights the Importance of Digital Accessibility and Inclusion
- Accessibility must be part of your COVID-19 response
- Report: COVID-19 Crisis is Driving Digital Accessibility Awareness
- How is COVID-19 Impacting Digital Accessibility?
- How is COVID-19 Impacting Digital Accessibility? [Report in PDF format (637 kb)
WCAG
- WCAG 2.1.
- WCAG 2.2 (first draft available).
- Information about the next generation of WCAG known as "Silver".
- Levels of WCAG Conformance
Blackboard Community
- Show us your accessibility statement.
- Let me show you our Blackboard. - Blog post where I demonstrate some enhancements I have made in the past year to our Blackboard interface.
- Let me show you our Blackboard. - version of this post on my own blog, so no Community login required.
Tools
About Colour Blindness
- Visual impairment and computing - common questions.
- Colour blind awareness.
- Colour blindness on Wikipedia.
Colour Contrast
- Relative Luminance.
- Comparing Luminance.
- Relative luminance and contrast ratio.
- Color Theory and Contrast Ratios.
- WebAIM Colour Contrast Checker.
- Accessible Colour Suggester.
- Who can use? (My recommended colour contrast checker).
- Using Inspect Element to check colour contrasts.
- Enthusiastic discussion about how colour contrast should be calculated in the future.
- WebAIM accessibility analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages
Example of enforcing a colour scheme based on Blackboard Course IDs using JSHack
- Download JSHack 1.0.13.
- JS Hacks wiki.
- Example JS Hack that loads CSS on ARCH courses that forces course menus to a certain colour scheme based on the course id.
University of Southampton resources
- UoS Brand Colour Palette.
- Using Colours Accessibly - this is where you can find my colour accessibility matrix and other examples.
Recommended Links for personal development
- Learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript
- CSS Tricks
- Accessibility with Lindsey
- Laura L. Carlson's weekly newsletter with selected links to new Accessibility and CSS content from around the web.
- Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit
- Web Accessibility checklist
CSS
Check out my other presentations!
For TLC Europe 2020
- BbTLCEUR 2020: The Bluffer’s Guide to Blackboard Theme Accessibility
- BbTLCEUR 2020: Better Blackboard Help: Where your users need it, when they want it.
From TLC Europe 2019
- BbTLCEUR 2019: A Bluffer's Guide to Customising the 2016 Blackboard Theme
From TLC Europe 2018
- BbTLCEUR 2018: Upgrade Club
| Matthew Deeprose |
| Senior Learning Designer University of Southampton |
http://bit.ly/2IVuG4t @VLEguru |
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