e-Learning Leadership Blog

Wow! This article is so inspiring! One of my heroes in e-learning, Ethan Edwards, refers to another of my heroes: Tom Kuhlman. I loved the ending: “(…) great, engaging e-learning is really available to all of us. And if we only produce boring, ineffective e-learning, it isn’t because the tools force us to, but that we or our organizations as a whole are choosing to do less than we are capable of.” Strong, direct and shaking…but not for everybody. I can tell you: at least in my country, Mexico, there are still people in the e-learning industry who would be indifferent to this vital message. 
 

Ethan...high marks for making content exploratory, and high marks, too, for getting practice involved. I've said in my recent blogs where I've literally declared war on bad e-learning that rapid tools didn't have to be page turners, but I do think these tools almost encourage shortcuts in instructional design. 
 
Where I would still like to see more from your example is demonstration and interaction with avatars. They bring a social element to simulations that transform the experience. Your example is still pretty much classified as e-reading and falls short of what I think learners really deserve. 
 
If I may, I'd like to share some survey results from the first time we switched one of our clients over to avatar-driven sims, here.

What happens when a screen reader such as JAWS runs up against this kind of elearning? How would you modify it to be 508-compliant?

Satisfying 508-Compliance is a difficult challenge. The screen readers are set up to read screens of text, yet screens of text really don't provide training. Good interactivity almost always involves a visual component that goes way beyond simply reading words, so it is a far bigger challenge than just getting a screen reader to work. 
 
The standards don't require that all users get the same thing, but rather that there are equivalent modes of operation to accommodate the listed impairments. There seem to be two approaches: One is to create a lowest common denominator design that uses no features that challenge anyone. To me, this seems like a waste of e-learning potential, and isn't actually useful for any users. The other is to consciously design multiple modes of operation. Create a full media design, but then also create a secondary mode of operation that simplifies the interactivity (removing fine motor control of mouse, asserting a more strictly linear flow that screen readers can process, facilitate closed-captioning, etc.) that will provide an appropriate experience for users that choose that mode of operation. This doesn't necessarily require higher cost or even longer timelines as long as appropriate project management controls are in place. 
 
I used to record textbooks for Minnesota Services for the Blind for students enrolled in colleges and universities throughout the state. Since my background is technical, I was often assigned the math and science textbooks, and I was trained in very specific rules for reading and describing tables and charts so that the students would not miss any content. As a result, I found myself several times reading the entire trigonometric tables in the back of Algebra and Trigonometry books. I know the rules specified that they had to be read because the textbook content was to be "the same," but one can hardly imagine a less-accessible format in which to convey that information to a visually impaired student. I see the same thing happening online. Sometimes the best strategy is to actually think about what the intended outcome is in conjunction with the abilities of the learners, and then to design the experience that actually takes that into consideration.

This is amazing. We need more such creative content pieces to make eLearning more attractive for skeptics.  
 
Diipak Gupta, 
Chief eLearning evangelist, 
BigGyan Cloud eLearning