Busting the Top 10 eLearning Accessibility Myths with Susi Miller

Jayne Davids  
But I have got the pleasure of introducing my good friend, Susi Miller. And I've been a friend of TLDC for probably about four years now. And when I found out that Luis was putting on this event, I just knew that Susi needed to be involved. So I met Susi were both members of the E Learning Network, which is a not for profit organization. And Susi was doing a webinar on accessibility. And I just, I was just hooked, I was mesmerized by what she was sharing. And I just knew that I had to do better. And there's lots to learn. And I'm taking small steps, but I think those small steps make a difference, hopefully. So I'm absolutely delighted to introduce to my good friend and author of designing accessibility to accessible learning content, Susi Miller.

Susi Miller  
Thank you, thank you so much for inviting me and for that lovely introduction, Jane. So I just, I just wanted to thank everyone really for attending today, we're giving up your your extremely valuable time to find out more about e learning accessibility, and also some of the myths associated with it. So let's begin by going through our agenda for the session this morning. So we're going to start by having a look at a definition of accessibility. And that's because it can have so many different meanings in an E learning context. Next, I'll go through the 10 most common myths about elearning accessibility. And I'll also be giving you a few takeaways as we go through. So hopefully, you'll find that helpful, particularly if you find that you're needing to advocate for inclusive learning content, will then have a final key takeaway. And to finish, we'll have some time for a q&a session. So as I said, We'll start by looking at exactly what we mean by accessibility. And I often find that when I use the term accessibility in an E learning context that people misunderstand me. And that's because they think that I'm using it in the sense of either something that's easily obtained or used, or either something that's easily understood. So although it can have those meanings for the purpose of what we're discussing today, and for this presentation, what we mean by accessibility is I think, best defined by the W three C's. So that's the World Wide Web Consortium. And they say that accessibility means that people with disabilities can equally perceive, understand, navigate and interact with content. And it also means that they can contribute equally without barriers. And I think one of the key words to be aware of in this definition, the reason that I like it so much is this word barriers. And that's because unless we develop learning, which is accessible, what we're doing is actually preventing people from achieving their full potential. So if we create barriers in learning by not making it accessible, we're actually limiting people's ability to learn and therefore succeed in our education system, in our workplace, and, and ultimately, even in society. So while I think that many people are aware of barriers that we can create, when when we're creating our learning, for example, if we don't put alternative text onto images or captions on videos, for example, for me, it's almost more important to be aware of the many barriers which stopped designers and developers actually engaging with accessibility in the first place. And I think those are the many myths, the the assumptions, the misconceptions, which I still think are surprisingly common today. And these are the myths that we're going to be looking at this morning. So hopefully, by the end of the presentation that I'll be able to convince even the most skeptical people that learning content, making learning content accessible is the right thing to do. And that is also achievable. So we'll start now by looking in more depth at these myths. And really, they're just based on the most common things which I hear from clients at conferences, in discussions, or I see on social media. Now throughout the session. Today, I'm going to be asking you some questions, and there's no need to answer put your answers in the chat. I really just want to get you thinking. So the first thing I'm going to ask you to think about is to guess what you think is the most common myth which prevents elearning professionals from engaging with accessibility, just to see if you agree with me.

So in my experience, the myths that I probably encounter most often is that accessibility isn't worth doing because it only benefits a niche audience. Now, if you do any research into statistics about disability in different countries, you'll probably find a wide range of different information. And this can be due to the definitions of disability used or the way that the data is collected or interpreted. So that's why I tend to stick to the broad range of statistics that's offered by accessibility. The experts. And they say that in most western countries, the size of the disabled population ranges from 12% to 26% of the overall population. And globally, most people agree that it's about 15%. Having said that, statistics in the US are very clear. So according to the CDC, 61 million adults were 26% of the population have some type of disability. Now, while those statistics alone might not be enough to persuade every one of the importance of accessibility, sometimes I think the economics helps. So the spending power of households with at least one disabled person is $490 billion in the US, and $8 trillion worldwide. So this brings us on to our first key takeaway of the session. And that comes from Neil Milliken, who's Global Head of accessibility at atolls, and it's the best counter argument that I've heard to this myth. And what he says is 1.3 billion disabled people worldwide is not a niche. It's a demographic mega trend, which I hope you'll agree is a great quote, to have to hand whenever anyone suggests that disability is a niche. So our next myth is the one where people say things like, Oh, we don't need to make e learning accessible. We don't have any disabled people in our workforce. Or it could equally be students in our institution that since so much of what we do does focus on workplace learning, we'll have a go at addressing this one in the workforce. And this brings us to our next question. And again, no need to answer in the chat, just have a guess yourself. What percentage of the US us workforce do you think is disabled? Now I actually found it quite difficult to get accurate up to date figures to answer this, but an accepted approximation is from 8% 12% 15%. And as I said, an accepted value is about 12%. So in the UK, it was actually easier to get statistics and it's about 13%. So another key thing to be aware of is it's really likely that these figures are a significant underestimate. And that's due to two things really undisclosed, an undiagnosed disability. So a recent study in the US concluded that only about 39% of employees with disabilities have disclosed this to their manager and 21% hr. And if you add to this, the large numbers of people who have haven't had a formal diagnosis, which often applies to people have neurodiverse conditions, such as dyslexia, or ADHD, then your percentages go up even further. And the final factor to be aware of when it comes to workplace disability is that whether through things like depression or chronic stress, cancer or back pain, some workers become disabled at work. In fact, according to microlink, one in four people who become disabled do so whilst they're in it that were actually in work. So although we can't be sure of the exact figures, I think it's safe to say that making our workplace learning inaccessible excludes more than one in 10 of our audience. And is that really what we want for our compulsory compliance training, or our health and safety courses or our staff development programs.

Our next myth is about the range of disabilities which are catered for by accessible learning content. And a misconception that I've encountered many times is that accessibility is only important for people with visual impairments. And I think this is a really important one to tackle because without having an understanding of the range of disabilities, which are covered by accessibility, it's impossible to understand the types of things you need to do to make your learning accessible. So to tackle this mythical, start by looking at the four categories, which for ease we divide digital accessibility into. And those are vision, hearing, motor, and cognitive. And, of course, these are very artificially neat categories. But just for our purposes, it's a it's a useful starting point. Now in a moment, I'm going to ask you to start thinking again. But before I do that, I just want you to focus on the icon that we have for motor impairments, which is a mouse icon. So that's just to sort of remind you that in the digital context, when we're thinking about a motor impairment, we're thinking about dexterity issues, which makes it difficult or sometimes impossible for learners to interact with content using a mouse. And instead, they use a range of assistive technologies, but very often the keyboard. So now that we've established those four categories, I'm just gonna pause for a little while and ask you to think of a person who has a disability or an impairment. It could be yourself, it could be a colleague, it could be a customer or a client. It could be a friend, a family member, or even someone famous. Now I want you to think of which of the four categories their disability or impairment would fall under. And now I'm going to ask you to see if you can think of one example for each of the other categories. Again, just pause for a couple of seconds, they can have a thing. Now I'm just going to run through some of the examples of things that people have given me in the past. So for vision,

we have blindness, color blindness, low vision, glaucoma, cataracts, and diabetic retinopathy, some so some specific categories, there are some specific assess, sorry, some specific, you know, the kind of general and then some specific conditions that people quite often give a hearing. We have deafness, hearing loss, acoustic trauma, auditory auditory processing disorder. And then we have for motor loss or damage of limbs, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, repetitive strain injury, cerebral palsy, and Parkinson's all very common examples that come up for cognitive, a very broad range we have here so we can have learning disabilities such as Down syndrome, we can have neurodiverse conditions, dyslexia, ADHD, ASD, then we have some conditions affected by movements and flashing content, such as epilepsy, and vestibular disorder. And then we can also have a whole range of mental health issues such as depression. So I hope that's a great start in helping you to be more aware of the different types of disabilities impairment and impairments, which benefit from accessible learning. And also for tackling that myth that accessibility only then it benefits people with visual impairments. So now that we've discovered the different types of disability and who it benefits is time to tackle an associated myth, which is that accessibility only benefits people with permanent disabilities. So although some people, some disabled people find it really frustrating, and that's very understandable that accessibility needs to be justified. By widening the scope to temporary and situational impairments, I do think it's valuable to consider because it changes the focus for quite a lot of people away from us versus them mentality. Motor thinking is just us thinking really. So the idea, in other words, is that accessibility benefits everyone. So to look at this in closer detail, I'm going to start by having a look at temporary impairments. So just have a few seconds now to think about some impairments that people could have temporarily, which would make it difficult or impossible to interact with digital content. So the picture on the screen might give you a clue as to a temporary motor impairment. So we have a motor impairment due to an injured hand or wrist or wrist. We could also have a visual impairment due to eye surgery, hearing impairment due to headcode cold, and a cognitive impairment due to stress and anxiety. And now we'll move on to situational impairment. So interestingly, when I used to cover this on training, I found that people often found it much more difficult to think of situational rather than temporary impairments. But I think the impact of COVID-19 has changed that. So look, let's look at some examples of situational impairments, which we might be more aware of now as a result of working at home during the pandemic. So again, we have a picture, which is an example of a motor impairment. So using a laptop whilst holding a sleeping child is a good example. For visual impairment, we could have using old equipment or slow broadband, which won't allow you to download images. For hearing impairment, we can have sharing a kitchen table with someone on a zoom call, certainly an experience that I've had. And then for cognitive impairment, learning in a noisy and distracting home environment environment. So I think considering temporary and situational impairments is a really useful strategy in showing how accessibility can benefit all of our learners.

So nearly halfway there. Now, our next myth is the one that says accessibility is only important for federal departments and agencies. Now, it's true that due to legislations, such as section 508 accessibility is more important in federal organizations, but it's also worth knowing. And it's certainly something that I wasn't aware of before. But it's also extended to other types of organizations through state laws, institutional laws, and also grant requirements. And it's also worth knowing that even though you may think that accessibility is only important for federal agencies, agencies, your competitors don't agree with you. So we have two quotes now from the industry. perspectives which come from my book designing accessible learning content. And the first is from a leading content provider. What they say is that there is now a noticeable increase in awareness and accessibility in procurement procedures across the board, with many potential customers now actively seeking out information about our accessibility credentials. And the second is from an offering tool provider. And they say that although inclusive design may have been overlooked in the past, it is now so fundamental to the diversity and inclusion agenda of so many organizations that providing learning content, which is not accessible to all learners, is no longer an option. And continuing our focus on authoring tool providers, I think it's beginning to come increasingly common to see them focus on the accessibility features of their tools, because they recognize it's good for business and for extending their market reach. And I've also recently seen evidence of accessibility being a unique selling point for learning management systems and also for virtual events platforms. So I think the key takeaway is that your competitors have already realized that making their products and services accessible, enhances their brand, and increases their market share and profits beyond just a focus on federal departments and agencies. Now, the next myth that we're going to tackle shifts us to thinking more about the learning content itself. And this one goes something like, you can't use images or videos, inaccessible e learning. And I think this myth has mainly come about because of our reliance for many years on providing an accessible alternative for eLearning courses. And in most cases, this has been a word or a PDF document, which typically contains only only the text of the course. And it's designed to be an alternative for people who use assistive technology, most often screen reader users being the main target audience. Now, a couple of years ago, at a learning technologies conference in London, there was a talk from the people from know, the noblis authoring tool, and I discovered a really useful visual way of demonstrating the result of this approach. So this first image of a standard Rubik's cubes, it has all of it squares in the bright colors that were familiar with. And that represents a standard eLearning course not designed for accessibility. And the second image shows the accessible alternative. So it's been adapted so that each of the squares has its color indicated in Braille, so that it's, it's accessible for a non visual user. But the crucial point here is that all of the squares are now white. And that makes it a really poor experience for someone who is visual. And that's exactly what happens when we strip out any visual engagement or video content from our courses in order to make them accessible, but it doesn't have to be that way. So we can use as many images as we like as long as we add alternative text to any which add meaning so that the description can be voiced by a screen reader. And we have similar devices that we can add to video resources to make them accessible. So we can use videos as long as we add captions so that they are accessible for people who have hearing impairments. This depends on functionality of the altering tool that you're using. But some top tools do have captioning tools within them, and others allow you to upload a caption file. And another option is to embed videos which have captions added to them. So for example, captions are automatically added to videos in YouTube. But a really important point and point to remember is that they always need to be edited to correct them for any errors and to also add punctuation.

If your videos contain important visual content is also important that you add audio description which describes this for learners with visual impairments. And another option, which is a highly recommended by accessibility experts is to add a transcript. And this is because it benefits a huge range of learners, including people who simply prefer reading to watching videos, people with cognitive impairments who may find it difficult to process moving images, people with dyslexia who benefit from having the text and being able to change the color and the spacing to make it easier to process the information and deafblind people who can only access the content of the video if you provide a descriptive transcript which they can interpret using Braille display. So here's our key takeaway for this myth. Making elearning accessible doesn't harm the learning experience, it enhances the experience for everyone. It adds alternative ways of accessing the content which caters for a whole range of different experiences and preferences. In other words, it provides multiple ways of accessing the content. So just like a Rubik's Cube, which has color and texture, it caters for a wider audience, and it provides a richer learning experience for everyone. So now let's focus a bit more on some of the myths which surround the sort of nuts and bolts of creating accessible learning content. Myth number seven is a common complaint that I hear from designers and developers. And it is we can't make elearning accessible because we don't have the right offering tool. So let's explore now how authoring tools can make it easier for us to create accessible learning content. And we'll start with a true or false question for you. So the The question is that our guidelines to help providers make their authoring tools accessible? Do you think that's true or false? So the answer is true, you may be surprised to find that there are actually guidelines to help providers make their offering tools accessible. So just like workout, they are produced by W three C, they are known as the offering tool accessibility guidelines or attack, whereas with CAG is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And they were first released in 2015. But unlike with CAG, these guidelines are not a legal obligation. They're just good practice and guidance. So attack has a whole series of very detailed recommend recommendations. But at its heart, his aim is to first of all make tools themselves themselves accessible for developers, then to make sure that tools allow developers to actually create accessible content. And thirdly, to support developers to make content accessible. So the attack then give us the benchmark as to what all three tool providers should be doing to make it easier for us to produce accessible learning content. Having assessed many offering tools in the research I did for my book, I don't believe there is this magic one tool that has got it exactly right yet, but I think there are certainly they're certainly getting better. But even so if we come back to our Rubik's Cube analogy, again, there are certainly some tools which make the experience of designing accessible learning content feel like this. And some can even make it feel like this even more difficult. But let's have a look. Now at the positives, let's have a look at some of the things that elearning tool providers can do to make it easier to create accessible learning content. So the first and I would argue the most important is an up to date conformance statement of voluntary product accessibility template or V repat, which is aligned to workout 2.1 levels a and double A. So best practice examples also have tools specific instructions, which tell you how to use your tool to meet the level which is the legal standard now in in many countries. Another best practice is to provide good additional supporting guidance, which gives you more information about making your content accessible. So this example gives more detail about which are the tools layouts and can be used to best accommodate different types of impairments. Another good feature is built in accessibility functionalities such as automatic accessible alternative activities. And this example shows an accessible multiple choice version of a drag and drop interaction, which appears automatically. Accessibility checkers are also very helpful, as are very clearly labeled workout compliant themes.

And the final example is to have accessibility built into the workflow so that it doesn't feel like a chore or something additional that you have to do the information is just there as you're designing and developing your content. So I hope you agree that there are some great examples of best practice accessibility features already available in tools. And I'm very hopeful that they will become standard in every tool at some point in the future. So now moving on to our next myth, and this is the one that says accessible. elearning can't be engaging or interactive. Another very common one is very similar, I think to our myth about accessible elearning not being able to be visually engaging. And it falls into the category of what I call the either or dilemma. So this is the idea that elearning can either be interactive, or it can be accessible, it can be innovative, or it can be accessible, it can be beautifully designed, or it can be accessible, lots of variations on that theme. And I actually think that this misconception is probably the single most damaging to the reputation of accessible e learning. And it's the reason why so many e learning professionals don't engage with it. So let's start our exploration of this myth. One final question for you to think about. So do you know which interactivity in your authoring tool is accessible? So of course, there's no right or wrong answer to this question. But it's worth knowing that many tools now offer interactive activities which are accessible. This is a great example from the h5 p m tool which offers an overview information in one really handy place on all its content types, and it details whether they're accessible or not, are the tools may not have such an easy to access list, but they certainly do have interactive activities, interactive activities, which are accessible. So for example, some have dropped down alternatives for matching and sequencing drag and drops, which are keyboard and screen reader accessible. Other interactivity which is commonly accessible includes true or false questions, multiple choice and multiple response activities. And the key point is that if two if a tool has interactive interactivity which is accessible, this also provides the opportunity for content authors to be creative and innovative. So this is an example of a quiz which I've created, I'm using the tool storyline, and it shows how taking a multiple response activity and combining it with images and motion paths can mimic a drag and drop interaction, and yet still be fully keyboard and screen reader accessible. Now, I think it's worth sharing that this example comes from a fully accessible course, which was shortlisted for the best nonprofit and public sector project in the Learning Technologies awards. And I say that not I promise, because I want to prove what a great instructional designer I am. But because it's the best argument to counteract the myth that I have that accessible elearning can't be engaging or interactive.

So if all three tools are getting better accessibility, is there something else which is still holding it back from becoming the default in learning content. And I'd say the two are to last Mexico. The other big part of the reason for this, and the first of these number nine in our list is that we don't have the time or the budget to make elearning accessible. Now while I think it's important to be clear that accessibility does take commitment, and it does take extra time, particularly when people are new to it. There are many strategies which can help organizations organizations to make accessibility, less timing, less time consuming and costly. So we don't have time to go into these in the into great detail. I could teach a whole webinar on this, but we'll have a look at some of the key ones now. So the most important I think of these strategies is to make sure that accessibility is a consideration or a core requirement from the start. So as anyone who's had been involved in retrofitting, or shoehorning in accessibility at the end of a project knows, is infinitely more time consuming and costly to do it this way. Other things that you consider are to streamline the process so that you're confident from the outset about the accessibility of your tool, and how to work around any limitations. I'd also advise setting up accessible templates and interactions which can be reused in projects. And other things which are key are having organizational support a leadership, which recognizes the benefits of accessibility and is supportive of the extra time and resources that it will take to implement particularly for initial training and support for content authors and developers. Now, developing a team of champions is also a really helpful strategy because it prevents accessibility from just being the site the speciality of one or two passionate individuals, which can often be the case. So that's a very quick whizz through some of the things you can consider. But to finish this myth, I just want to share this comment, which I saw recently on social media, and for me was a true lightbulb moment. What it says was accessibility isn't more work, you were just cutting corners before your work was incomplete. So yeah, a real takeaway, that one for me. And now on to our final myth. And another reason I believe so many elearning designers and developers fail to engage with accessibility. And this is the idea that we can't make elearning accessible, accessible because it's too difficult. And here's the thing about this myth. If you are talking about making content generally accessible, then this is something that can be achievable in many ways, quite quite often simple ways. But if you're talking about making your learning content compliant to legal accessibility regulations, most often as we said, workout 2.1 Level A, then I would have to agree that this is all too often the case it does seem true. So just a quick look at one of the most notorious of these workout success criteria and they're called WCAG 1.3 point one info in relation It ships is a good demonstration of why this is the case. So it says, information structure and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined, or are available in text. Now, the main purpose of this standard is to make sure that content authors use headings and list styles and Mark header rows on tables so that they're accessible to assistive technology users. But I challenge anyone who said that the workout explanation is clear and straightforward. So the language that's used here, it's technical, it's complicated, and it's designed for web developers. And I think that makes it very difficult for the majority of elearning professionals to understand, which leads far too many people to give up on accessibility altogether.

And this is quite typical of the language that you'll find in wcac, including the four overarching poor principles so that that's perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Now, I believe very few people fully understand. And they often make finding any information really time consuming, and frustrating, just by grouping them into those four different those four overarching principles. And that's why I wrote designing accessible learning content, I wanted to save as many content authors as possible from the hours and hours of grappling with accessibility and applying workout to, to learning content. So it became easier for everyone to do. So it's based around a contextual framework, which allows you to apply work again in a logical order, which makes sense for designing learning content. And it also translates them into plain English with lots of examples using different tools. So that concludes our look at the top elearning accessibility myths, and I hope it's made it possible to see the huge benefits and value of accessible elearning. I genuinely believe that attitudes are slowly but surely changing and that there's no longer any excuse for us not to move forward as an industry and work towards making accessible learning content the norm, rather than the exception. And I believe it's the responsibility of leaders and of us at grassroots level. Because if you remember nothing at all else from this presentation, I'd like you to take away this famous quote from the user experience guru, Steve Krug. And he said, very famously, the one argument for accessibility, which doesn't get made nearly often enough, is how extraordinarily better it makes some people's lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people's lives just by doing our job a little better? So I hope you found that useful. And I think now we have hopefully some time for some questions.

Luis Malbas  
We do we have some time for some questions. Let me start out with answering this question. Yes, the sessions are being recorded. And I'll be sending out a link to all of the recordings to all the registered attendees. So. So look out for that after the event completes. Give me a little time to sort through that stuff. Susie, people are wondering whether or not you'll have the deck available. I know it'll be part of the recording. But

Susi Miller  
yeah, I can. Yes, I can. I can share that. Yeah, share the information that I'll put it in an accessible format. So it's, yeah, you can it's available to share? Yeah.

Luis Malbas  
Okay. Give me lots of time to do that. Now, um, folks are wondering, like, I've got Jeanette Brooks, she's wondering about a live version of your accessible multiple response question that you built in storyline. Okay. Is that available anywhere? Or is that something that you can share?

Susi Miller  
Um, so how it works, how it actually works. So there is I have done another webinar about that, which has got some, some examples, a bit of it in action and how it started off in an inaccessible format and became accessible. So again, yes, I have got some recordings of that that I can share.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, great. Great. Excellent. Okay, let's see, we've got one from Samantha curtain here. She's asking if there are resources, you can recommend that provide alternatives to popular elearning interactions that aren't accessible, like drag and drop activities?

Susi Miller  
Yeah, so that's a really good question. And I think, as I say, sometimes it comes back to to what tool that you're using. So if you if your tool isn't telling you and I certainly when I started working in the tool that I was using, I did a lot of testing myself, to see which activities were accessible and accessible. I think an ideal thing to do is depending on the authoring tool that you're using, is to maybe contact the ordering tool and ask them to give you that information. I think that's the first step that we need to take in, in maybe helping or offering tools to be quite accountable. For the, you know, the accessibility provision that they provide for us, I think drag and drop is one that comes up quite a lot. And I think the the example that I gave there was an in the webinar I talked about was that the reason I decided to try and make that drag and drop accessible was it was really central to what I was trying to do in the piece of learning. But quite often, I think that, you know, we kind of tend to think that drag and drop is kind of an essential component of elearning. But often, I think there are other alternatives that you can use. So sometimes what you're trying to, to either test or to get someone to think about can actually be just as equally valid and equally interesting for everybody in a simple multiple choice question. So it's sometimes it really depends on what you're trying to do with what the reason for your question is. But yes, I think most tools now do have interactive alternatives. But sometimes it is just digging down and trying to find out which ones are accessible. And as I say, it'd be great if people contacted their offering tools and ask them to provide a handy list so that they can see which ones were were immediately accessible to us.

Luis Malbas  
Love it. Okay, great. All right. Trish Kelly is asking, How do you feel about? How do you pronounce it? WCAG? I heard you say, Well,

Susi Miller  
yeah, loads of different ways. Yes, I tend to say what CAG? But yeah.

Luis Malbas  
Something something new for me there. How do you feel about what CAG 2.2? And 3.0? Do you think that the world is ready for an even more elaborate standard? What do we miss by sticking with 2.1?

Susi Miller  
Yeah, I think that the The great thing about workout is that it is it does develop in line with technology. So I think 2.1 was an important a really important upgrade, because it was it was is taking into account different upgrades and technology and developments in technology. So very, a lot of them focus on mobile technology. So 2.2 and three are kind of quite sort of set different 2.2 is additional requirements on top of what we have already. So I think, I'm not sure if they've actually been finalized yet. But I think that they were looking at I think about 12 of them. And I think those are, again, just sort of becoming more in line with with advances in technology. So I can totally understand how you know, we've already got workout 2.1, Level A and double A is is 50 criteria. And I think I can't remember off the top of my head, whether it's nine or 12, new ones then come in so it can feel again, overwhelming when you're, you know, a content author and you're trying to grapple with with yet more that you need to then be aware of, but I think that's the key thing for me is that they are in line with with with advances in technology. And I think with assistive technology as well, which changes and updates all the time. So you know, and different thinking about accessibility. So workout three is slightly different because the idea behind workout three is that it's it's a complete overhaul of the regulations. And one key thing, for example, is that the moment workout accessibility tip part, our pass or fail criteria, so that the thinking behind workout three is is more along the lines of you can have different levels of accessibility. So I think I think that's a great, great to move forward to, because I do think there is a bit of this, but that's why I think accessibility sometimes is very scary, because you just think, well, I'm failing, you know, it's not it's I think accessibility is is a progression, it's a journey. And I think, you know, if you've just put so much into it, and you get well you're failing, then that isn't overly helpful. So in some ways, I think workout three is is is a great step forward. And I also think that the one of the the key things about it is it is much more supposed to be a much friendlier, easy to use language, which I think is a is a key, you know, something that really needs to be addressed. So, I mean, I think it's in its early stages. And I think that the kind of thinking I think in accessibility sort of expert circles as it is that probably that there will be you know, quite a long transition, and probably work out three isn't going to be, you know, widely adopted until it comes into to legislation. So there's a feeling that that that could take, you know, I think some I've heard someone say between, you know, up to five years. So that's, I'm not an expert on that. But, you know, for me, that makes sense that, you know, we're at the moment where we're looking at workout 2.1 because that's in the majority of the legislation that we need to meet. So that's our kind of benchmark that we're working to. So hopefully that answers that.

Luis Malbas  
It good does it. One last question from Anu. She's asking you mentioned adding additional textual descriptions for visually loaded videos, do you add these descriptions in the voiceovers transcriptions or in any other way?

Susi Miller  
Okay, so generally, the the kind of standard way that you that you've probably noticed, if you if you is called audio description, and you're and you may notice that when you're watching TV, so it's, it's quite often in, in the gaps between the action and the and the the spoken, you know, if the gaps are long enough, it's it's gaps in the in the spoken, you know, what people are saying sorry, and the and the action, sometimes you'll see a video where it's and the action is paused, because that and that then allows people to put in the audio description describing what's happening. So that that's, that's one way of doing it, I think quite often in elearning, is it's also possible to add audio description as a separate audio track. And sometimes you do see people you know, if people don't have an authoring tool that allows them or you know, or an external throwing tool that allows them to add audio description to a video, you can add it as a separate audio track. And then in effect, it's really like someone reading out the script, you know, it has all of the all of the the words that are spoken, but it also has all of that description as well. So So yes, it can vary how you add your your, your visual description to to videos.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. All right. Well, Susie, thanks so much for doing this session. Really appreciate you helping produce this event. And, and, and and your participation. And I think people were trying to access the website to get your book, but I don't know, we may have crashed the server because hopefully that's the case. But I will rob said he's buying your book today. We're gonna I'll make sure that a link is included to your book and when I get all the recordings out. And so but thanks again, thanks for everything. I really appreciate it. Hopefully this isn't the last that that we'll see you and be great. Good. Good luck with your book. All right, everybody. We've got another break here. So take some time go out into the lounge. I'm Diane Elkins is going to be up on next she's going to be talking like kind of a more hands on thing with doing some accessibility with Microsoft Excel. So we'll see you in the next one. Thanks, everyone.

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