Custom eLearning solution

Accessibility

Imagine your current workforce. Now, imagine a quarter of your team not getting the training they need to effectively do their jobs. When training is inaccessible to those with disabilities, it sends a message that their growth isn’t a priority. Besides giving everyone the same chances for learning and development, designing accessible eLearning is the law: Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires organizations to make learning materials and courses available to all employees, regardless of ability.

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Why accessible eLearning?

Accessibility for all has always mattered, but it matters now more than ever. Accessibility compliance standards are challenging the digital design industry and in return, we are rising to the call. Designers are being encouraged, or in some cases, required by law, to follow the international Web Contact Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) put out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). At ELM, the exciting challenge is always one of form meeting function in the most beautiful and accessible way possible. Compliance standards are ushering in a new era, not just for web designers, but for learning experience designers tasked with accessibility for a broad spectrum of learners.

Our accessibility training approach

Acknowledging the need for more accessibility is a great first step. Your next step is to look through a new lens to update your eLearning to close ability gaps, cultivate a culture of inclusivity, and ensure that training is a positive experience for all of your learners. We’ll work together to consider your workforce accessibility challenges with our first-hand experience in creating eLearning for all. Whether it’s allowing for text-only options for hard-of-hearing team members or offering a spectrum of navigation options, we use our tools to make sure all of your employees feel valued and respected.

More than compliance

Making your eLearning 508 compliant is one of the main goals of accessible training, but it isn’t the only one. A globally-minded, forward-thinking organization understands that each team member is worthy of growth and development. It’s a dilemma many instructional designers face: sacrifice interactivity or 508 compliance. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation: We can build experiences that fulfill compliance standards while still offering an impactful experience for any learner.

Some cool things we’ve done

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Image for Intro to Data Technical Training

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A picture is worth a thousand words, but custom animations and illustrations deliver so much more.

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Successful companies do not just tolerate differences between people, they value them.

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Gone are the days of overcrowded conference rooms, boring trainings, and bad coffee.

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FAQs

First and foremost, it’s integral for the same reason accessibility should be an overarching priority across your organization: fairness.

Second—and in the case of corporate training—accessibility means giving employees equal learning experiences. And that means providing content that allows all employees to reach their full potential regardless of any constraints.

Finally—and this is for you, the business owner or manager—accessibility means opening up product access to your entire target audience.
- Visual impairments. These are people experiencing total blindness, low vision, or color blindness. Many of them use physical magnifiers or zoom features from browsers and operating systems. Some visually impaired individuals use screen readers, which is software that reads on-screen text out loud.
- Hearing impairments. This group of people includes people with various levels of hearing loss including complete deafness. Commonly, they also have some sort of voice, speech, or language impairment. To the hearing impaired, it’s important to provide textual alternatives such as captions in videos and transcripts for audio content. Due to language contraints, text simplification is also something to consider.
- Mobility impairments. This audience has movement disabilities such as paralysis, limb loss, or limb weakness. As a result, they might not be able to use a mouse or a head pointer. For instance, mobility-impaired individuals should be able to interact with all sections of eLearning solutions via keyboards and touch screens.
- Cognitive impairments. This can include the elderly and people with intellectual or learning disabilities, or mental illnesses. Depression, schizophrenia, dyslexia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder fit the characteristics of the cognitive impaired. The difficulties that they experience might be:
  - Understanding learning content
  - Remembering how to complete tasks
  - Feeling confused by inconsistent user interface layouts
- Images with alternative text and self-explanatory link text—proper for screen readers
- Unvisited links underlined in blue and visited links underlined in purple as these are familiar to most people—they meet the default HTML link configuration
- User interface buttons accessible by keyboards
- Date pickers accessible by screen readers
- Tables as alternative representations of data charts
- Simplified stepwise processes with progress bars, clear error messages, and simple error recovery

Case studies

Check out how we’ve taken inspired ideas and transformed them into workable realities for our clients.

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COVID Safety & Wellness Training

In March 2020, we couldn’t have predicted the way that COVID-19 would permanently change the face of the American workplace. With ever-changing guidelines and recommendations, our client, a large social media company, needed a way to disseminate new information to employees as they worked from home and (eventually) made their return to the workplace.

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Unconscious Bias Training Program

A global company knows that personalities, backgrounds, and culture are what makes an organization truly great. At the same time, our client, a large employment website, also knew that managers might need a refresher on confronting their unconscious biases to more effectively and empathetically lead their teams. Our project with Indeed focused on illustrations and scenarios that gave managers a more holistic idea of what leadership looks like in 2021.

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