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Re: Moodle, LAMS, SCORM and Accessibility

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From: Paul R. Bohman
Date: Jul 17, 2006 8:20AM

John E. Brandt wrote:
> The first one is based on the use of LAMS - Learning Activity Management
> System, an authoring tool/environment developed by LAMS International
> http://www.lamsinternational.com/ ...
> Does anyone with familiarity with these care to comment?

I was just at the EDMEDIA conference a couple of weeks ago, where James
Dalziel -- the originator of LAMS -- gave a keynote address about LAMS.
I spoke to him afterward and brought up the topic of accessibility. We
didn't speak in great detail, but my impression is that they like the
idea of accessibility, and have looked into it some, but not in a
systematic way.

The authoring side is Flash-based. I have not evaluated it for
accessibility. Judging by the HTML that the site uses (straightforward
but not standards-compliant; no form labels), I'd say they probably
haven't made the Flash accessible to screen reader users, but that's
only a guess. Someone would have to test it with a screen reader. Part
of the challenge will be that the authoring tool is conceptually very
visual. There is a lot of drag-and-drop, visual manipulation of
information, etc. It would be difficult to adapt it to non-visual forms
of interaction, and may in the end require an alternative interface, or
at least some creative keyboard shortcuts.

For the record, I'm not opposed to this type of visual interaction. I
think it can be very effective for visual users and can be great for
some types of cognitive disabilities. The downside is that this type of
interaction is not easy to make accessible to non-visual audiences.

The student side is simpler, and would be easier to make accessible than
the authoring side.

--

Paul R. Bohman
Technology Coordinator
Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities (www.kihd.gmu.edu)
George Mason University (www.gmu.edu)