Self-Advocacy Online is an educational- and networking Web site for teens and adults with intellectual- and other developmental disabilities. Created by The Research and Training Center on Community Living, it is intended for people participating in organized self-advocacy groups.

The site contains three sections: a “Learning Center”; a search tool for finding self-advocacy groups; and “My Page” for within-site e-mail messages and discussion forums.

Site Registration

The site registration form has a few simple fields.  Fun, instructional videos explain each step.  The first video automatically pauses until activated by the user to indicate readiness for instructions about the next field.

To register, users are required to accept the site’s “Terms of Use Agreement”. While I understand protecting intellectual-property rights, and applaud protecting users’ privacy, the agreement is not written in language understandable by the site’s intended audience.  It could have been prefaced by a bulleted, plain-language summary of its principles.

Learning Center

The Learning Center has two modules, “Living a Healthy Life” and “Getting Organized”.  They are slide presentations combining text, pictures and voice narration.  Small chunks of content use simple analogies and examples.

Search Tool for Self-Advocacy Groups

The Self-Advocacy Group Search Tool can be used via a drop-down list of states, a Zip Code field, or an image map of the United States.  Contact- and other information is listed for each group.

Discussion Forums / Messaging

The “My Page” section, the only one that requires registration, has a list of friends and access to within-site messaging.  Discussion groups have a simple interface that makes it easy to create, to join, and to read/write messages within them.  At the time of this writing, there are low numbers of groups, users and messages.

Accessibility Highlights

Evaluation of a few pages using WebAIM’s WAVE revealed compliance with accessibility guidelines.  The site also has many accessibility- and usability features for people with intellectual disabilities.  Highlights:

• a bright, simple, uncluttered page layout;
• large-size text, short in length, and written in plain language;
• scalable menu-button text that is not image based;
• Learning Center Modules
  • voice narration begins automatically;
  • contextually-relevant images are synchronized with the voice narration;
  • visual- and/or audio prompts throughout draw attention to content and to slide navigation; and
  • a simple-to-use video player has only one button (play/pause).

Accessibility Problems

• There is no text-size switcher / enlarger.
• With browser-based controls, text size can be enlarged a little on the site without breaking down its page layout, but problems occur with larger text sizes.
• In the site navigation menu, the current page is indicated by menu-button color, but in no other way.
• Videos are not closed-captioned.
• Search Tool Application
  • Form labels are missing.
  • The listings of self-advocacy groups all use the same link text, “More Information”, to related records.  This is a problem for screen-reader users.
  • Links to external Web sites open them in a new window without warning.
• Learning Center Modules
  • Keyboard or single-switch based navigation is not enabled. This is a problem typical of such Flash-based applications.
  • At one point in the “Living a Healthy Life” module, the voice narration instructs the user, “After each item, click the green ‘Next’ button'”. Though there is such a button at the bottom of the slide, the written instruction at the top says to, “… click the orange ‘Go’ button,” and the one that appears afterward is an orange ‘Go’ button.

Overall Impression

Self-Advocacy Online, despite the minor problems listed above, is a wonderful demonstration of accessibility and usability for people with intellectual disabilities.  In particular, it is obvious that considerable instructional-design effort went into the modules of The Learning Center.

The subject chosen for the site is very important to people with intellectual disabilities; self advocacy has been a recurring topic in my interviews for The Clear Helper project. I hope additional funding is received to develop additional content for the Web site, to market it, and to help it become a thriving community.

Self-Advocacy Project Funding

The MacArthur Foundation – 2008 – – $72,000 – Digital Media & Learning Competition Award Recipient:

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN

Self-Advocacy Online is an educational and networking website for teens and adults with intellectual and cognitive disabilities, targeted at those who participate in organized self-advocacy groups. In supporting greater networking, peer exchange, collaboration, and communication to a general public, Self Advocacy Online will extend the reach of and interaction among people with disabilities so that they can more effectively speak up for themselves and make their own decisions.

Retrieved from: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=enJLKQNlFiG&b=3897211&content_id={F51C7F1C-A1AE-40AF-BBA7-DE9929CD1C38}&notoc=1

NEC, Active Voice Messaging Division – 2006 – $35,000

To The University of Minnesota Institute on Community Integration (ICI)  –  Minneapolis, MN

For Self-Advocacy Online (SAO), a research and development project to bridge the “digital divide” for persons with intellectual disability (ID) and related cognitive disability (RCD). The project will test, validate and recommend standards for accessible websites for persons with ID and RCD, as well as provide a national, maximally accessible website for self-advocates with ID and RCD that exemplifies the validated standards and provides needed content on self-advocacy. http://rtc.umn.edu and http://www.qualitymall.org

Retrieved from: Google cache of http://www.activevoice.com/news/pressreleases/pressReleaseDetails.aspx?PressID=38

Notes

• The Research and Training Center on Community Living (RTC) is a part of The Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota.
• For a brief project description and a list of project staff, see “Self-Advocacy Online: Research and Development to Bridge the Digital Divide“.
• No endorsement of this project, its creators and/or its funders, is expressed or implied.

The Rix Centre specializes in developing new media technology and its use by people with intellectual disabilities to improve their lives. It is a research and development center as well as a charity based at the University of East London. In partnership with a team of Web users with intellectual disabilities, it develops standards and guidelines of Web accessibility for people with intellectual disabilities, particularly so they can participate in the rich-media world.

Click Start

One of The Rix Centre’s projects, Click Start, is of particular interest to me. Its purpose is to build, for people with intellectual disabilities transitioning to adult life, a network of accessible Web sites in ten North-East London boroughs.

Each site is a portal to smaller Wiki sites edited by staff of borough departments and by people with intellectual disabilities who use their services.  All are provided training, support and online software to produce and publish content.  “Easy read” Web sites are being created with photos, sound- and video clips alongside simple text.  The intention is to directly involve young people with intellectual disabilities so they may help each other with issues related to independent living, finding employment and education.

Important Goal

In a comment to my review of The Newham Easy Read Web site, Andy Minnion, director of The Rix Centre, states what he believes to be important about Click Start and the other such sites The Rix Centre has designed:

The key thing about these Websites and those that have followed ( at http://www.clickstart.org.uk ) is to engage people with ID in planning and developing the sites themselves so that their voices, experiences and opinions are shared and so that the support services featured are described by the people that they are designed to serve.

I could not agree with him more. I love that people with intellectual disabilities produce their own content for these Web sites.  Also, it appears to me they can publish it themselves.  My understanding is the “online software” being developed by The Rix Centre is a content management system accessible to users with intellectual disabilities.  This is wondrous to me.  That people with intellectual disabilities can produce and publish their own content is an ideal to which everyone should aspire.

I congratulate The Rix Centre, and wish every success to all the people involved in its projects.

Notes

• Click Start is a joint project of The Rix Centre and Ellingham Employment Services.
• About Click Start, there is a video introduction and a project-description video, both narrated by Mr.  Minnion. (Neither is closed-captioned.)
• The Click Start Web site employs Cognable Speeka, a text-to-speech product I recently reviewed.
• The Rix Centre, as is common in England, refers to people with intellectual disabilities as “people with learning disabilities and difficulties”.

Us 5 is a set of dramatic- and humorous videos starring actors with intellectual disabilities.  Episodes focus on making significant choices, and have interactive comic strips so users may try different choices.  They are also accompanied by an accessibility feature called “visual-captions”, which was designed for people with intellectual disabilities. Commissioned by the BBC, the videos were created by Gamelab London.

Accessibility Features

• “Visual captions” or “vis-caps”, which are intended for “… getting across the gist of a scene in simple cartoon-like pictures rather than subtitles.” They appear in panels to the right of the videos when the “V” navigation button is clicked.
• Video navigation and interactivity are keyboard- and switch accessible.
• Each video has subtitles and an audio-description, invoked by clicking the “S” and the “V” buttons respectively.
• When focus is on a navigation button, its name is announced out loud in a voice.

Glitches

• Tabbing through the navigation buttons skips the full-screen button.
• In the opening menu-of-videos, clicking an actor’s picture does not launch the respective video.  Instead, the “Click to Play” button must be clicked.  Its audio description does announce the name of the actor’s story to be played, but the actor’s pictures do not have their names.
• It appears the audio-description for the “spudnik” video is the wrong one; it does not match the scenes.

Conclusion

The videos are entertaining and have a high-production value.  The acting is simply terrific.  People with intellectual disabilities who have basic Web-surfing skills should be able to navigate the videos without difficulty.  The visual-captions feature is indeed innovative.  I look forward to seeing how its capability is advanced.

Wow!  I am a big fan.

References

• Description of the Us 5 videos. Includes a link to play them.
• Us5: BBC online videos help people with learning difficulties make their choices

Notes

• To interact with the videos, some screen-reader users need to use the ‘invisible cursor’ for JAWS or the ‘WE cursor’ for Window-Eyes.
• In England, people with “intellectual disabilities” are also known as people with “learning difficulties”.

How can search results from Web sites such as MADIL be made as easy to understand as possible by people with cognitive disabilities? In particular, what can sites do that contain thousands of database records?

Sample Web Site

One of these sites, DisabilityInfo.org, provides information about programs for people with disabilities living in Massachusetts.  It does not yet have visitor-selectable easy- and standard versions and other accessibility features specifically for people with cognitive disabilities, but I plan to incorporate them into its next redesign.

For each program, a DisabilityInfo.org database record has:

• contact information;
• a narrative description;
• program type(s);
• service(s) provided;
• populations and age-groups served; and
• lists of agencies that provide referrals and/or licenses.

(Link To Sample Record)

This may be an overwhelming amount of information for people with cognitive disabilities.  Relevant guidelines, such as Juicy Studio’s Developing sites for users with Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties, recommend breaking information into small chunks.

Alternatives for Reducing the Amount of Information

• Display only a program’s contact information.
• Display the contact information along with a link to the full record.
• Display the contact info with a link that leads to the program record’s information categories written in simple language.  For instance:
  • “I would also like to see:”
    • “What kind of program this is.”
    • “What this program will do for me.”
    • “How old I have to be to get help from this program.”
  • With each line a link, a click could present only the relevant part of the program record.
• Remove from being displayed the label of any field that does not contain data.
• Replace repetitive labels, categories or information with a single instance of them.

Simplifying Textual Content

Many of DisabilityInfo.org’s records contain a narrative description, often a paragraph in length. None were written keeping in mind the plain-language manner recommended by cognitive-accessibility guidelines. Unfortunately, creating such a version for thousands of database records may be cost prohibitive.  Perhaps the narrative description should not be shown at all if visitors choose to use an easy version of the Web site.

Elaborating Textual Content

DisabilityInfo.org’s database records have many agency acronyms.  A flaw I plan to correct is that they are not spelled out as recommended by long-standing, general accessibility guidelines.  (No acronym tags are provided.)  It might be even better to link them to short, simply-written descriptions of the agencies.

Wrap Up

As has been pointed out many times by accessibility advocates, accessibility features intended for people with disabilities make a site and its content more accessible to everyone.  For instance, the only information many people want about a program is its contact information.  Therefore, the alternatives described above would be beneficial across the spectrum of site visitors.

I know there are other revisions that could be made to make the textual content of the database records easier to understand.  I have more in mind, which I will review in future posts.  Since the INDEX team and I are in the midst of creating a new design for the DisabilityInfo.org Web site, I welcome suggestions from the accessibility community.