Accessibility of "Introduction to Engineering" Web Pages

This Research to Practice Full Paper presents the results of an exploration of the current level of accessibility of Engineering course webpages, the common pitfalls inherent in digital learning platforms, and the interventions established to ensure a higher level of accessibility and inclusion within the online portion of the engineering classroom.Most programs nationwide have implemented, or are starting to implement, digitally mediated courses. Since this form of learning is relatively new and constantly evolving, there is room for improvement in many areas of this digital learning system, especially in accessibility. There has been little improvement in these systems on assisting or helping students with any sort of disabilities, and content added within the learning management systems as frameworks is also lacking in incorporating features required for accessibility. Based on student responses to an initial survey, there could be “better features to better enable interaction and communication.” This paper addresses the research questions:•Does the type of webpage influence the number of accessibility errors on a webpage? and•Does the individual instructor who created the content for the webpage influence the number of accessibility errors?These research questions were grounded within research that has been completed within the computer science, learning management systems, and accessibility fields. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), a worldwide standard, was used to access the accessibility of multiple sections of introductory engineering course websites. Further research into the accessibility of common learning management systems supported the idea that certain prevalent accessibility faults were innate to the learning management system itself and were unable to be modified by the instructor of the course. This affected the analysis and the results of the sequential studies performed. The particular learning management system (LMS) utilized in this study was Canvas. Canvas was chosen due to its control of the market share and its use within the authors’ institution.To properly understand and answer the research questions, a series of three experiments was conducted. The first observational experiment was an exploratory complete randomized design investigating the number of WCAG level AAA errors found per page by type of page and by instructor. A generalized linear model was selected using Minitab. The second and third observational experiments were nested designs exploring errors per page dependent on instructor and type of page; ANOVA (analysis of variance) tests were run along the Tukey post hoc test and a check of the assumptions.All p values for each comparison were found to be significant. The post hoc tests denoted that there are significant differences between particular types of web pages and the instructors who produce the content for those pages.The result of these analyses were used to develop a workshop and guide to ensure professors and instructors are given accessibility information that is pertinent when creating an engineering course website. Additionally, engineering professors and instructors were given a quick tips and tricks sheet and were shown how to implement these suggestions into their engineering course website in order to maximize the impact of the work. This process and the training developed is presented. This should be relevant to anyone involved in course/curricular design with an online component.