Instructional Design

Accessibility and Usability Guidelines

Because of CCCOnline's desire to be section 508/ADA compliant, we must ask for your cooperation in this effort. The addition of course content or changes to that content are encouraged where you find that this will improve your course or provide a personal touch of your own. If you do add content or make changes to the content, we ask that you use an editor which produces compliant code (which Word most certainly does not!). Some suggestions are Netscape's Composer program, Dreamweaver, or Web Weaver EZ, a simple and free Web-page editor found at http://www.mcwebsoftware.com/wwez/.

However, in order to most effectively maintain the compliance aspects of your courses, we ask that you do not make changes related to formatting--which includes the format of the navigation bar (Course Menu) and the formatting, text colors, font styles, and page colors of the content pages--without first consulting your course designer and/or program chair. They are the experts in compliance standards, both hidden and visible, and can give you advice on what is acceptable before any changes are made--plus, the designers can make such changes for you if the changes are in compliance.

To assist you in better understanding the importance of 508/ADA compliance, take a look at these links to Web resources which offer good tips and information on what to do and not do in course pages (for example, why moving images or animations are bad for those with seizure issues). Links will open in a new browser window:

1. The Georgia Tech Research on Accessible Distance Education (GRADE) Project provides training and technical assistance, information dissemination, and research.
2. EASI - Equal Access to Software & Information is an accessibility and training site that will answer some of your questions and show you how to incorporate accessibility into your HTML pages and presentations. EASI offers guidelines for Adobe Acrobat, Flash, Excel, PPT, Word, and video.

Thank you for your assistance in maintaining the integrity of our courses for section 508/ADA compliance. Together we can create courses which are friendly for both the disabled population and able-bodied students.