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Thread: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually

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Number of posts in this thread: 6 (In chronological order)

From: Nathan Clark
Date: Thu, Oct 27 2022 9:18AM
Subject: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
No previous message | Next message →

Dear list,


Sorry for the long post.

My company has two products Jira and Confluence. We have an
accessibility plug in named unstoppable that makes both Jira and
Confluence accessible for blind screen reader users. Our CEO at the
beginning of the year wanted us to do half/full day trainings on both
unstoppable for Jira and Confluence. However after doing this
experiment for every month since may we have had 0 people attend our
last 3 monthly sessions. Some of us within the company originally
suggested at the beginning of the year that instead of doing the all
day trainings that we either create short couple minute videos of our
unstoppable product in action with Jira and Confluence and post it to
our website and social media sites so people can view it instead of
sitting in these half/full day trainings. Our CEO told us that we had
to do the full day trainings and it did not turn out well for us in
terms of the attendance. Our CEO said that the accessibility community
loves full day trainings!!! Is this true?

I was wondering if people could tell me what they think is more
beneficial for companies to do full day trainings or create short
videos with quizzes to help teach people how to use our products?

Any advice would be great?

Sincerely,
Nathan Clark


--
Nathan Clark
QA Automation Analyst Tech team
Accessibility assistant
CPACC
cell: 410-446-7259
email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
101 Village Blvd
Princeton, NJ 08540
SMBE & Minority Owned Business

From: Steve Green
Date: Thu, Oct 27 2022 10:23AM
Subject: Re: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
← Previous message | Next message →

This varies greatly depending on the culture of the company. I view continuous personal development as absolutely essential, so I used to give new testers 15 days off in their first year to do a variety of courses. In their second year I used to put them on a 3-day classroom-based course. After that, they typically did a few one-day courses and 4 to 6 days of conferences each year. We would also do lots of shorter in-house training sessions, from perhaps 30 minutes to a full day.

Now that we provide training courses, we find that some companies are willing to do the same - one put 10 people on a 4-day classroom-based course. However, others don't want to spend more than 1 to 2 hours, so I have often had to rip the guts out of a 1-day course to deliver what I can in a quarter of the time. Inevitably, this tends to leave little or no time for exercises that would help embed the knowledge. These companies never want to do the full course content in chunks, and I assume they just want to be able to say they have provided training and don't care how effective or comprehensive it is.

To answer your question, I would offer both the full day of training and the short videos, then monitor the demand and effectiveness of each. If you can show that people still need a lot of support despite having viewed the videos, you would then have a case for making the full day mandatory (assuming the quality of the video-based training is as good as it can be).

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd


-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > On Behalf Of Nathan Clark
Sent: 27 October 2022 16:19
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: [WebAIM] best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually

Dear list,


Sorry for the long post.

My company has two products Jira and Confluence. We have an accessibility plug in named unstoppable that makes both Jira and Confluence accessible for blind screen reader users. Our CEO at the beginning of the year wanted us to do half/full day trainings on both unstoppable for Jira and Confluence. However after doing this experiment for every month since may we have had 0 people attend our last 3 monthly sessions. Some of us within the company originally suggested at the beginning of the year that instead of doing the all day trainings that we either create short couple minute videos of our unstoppable product in action with Jira and Confluence and post it to our website and social media sites so people can view it instead of sitting in these half/full day trainings. Our CEO told us that we had to do the full day trainings and it did not turn out well for us in terms of the attendance. Our CEO said that the accessibility community loves full day trainings!!! Is this true?

I was wondering if people could tell me what they think is more beneficial for companies to do full day trainings or create short videos with quizzes to help teach people how to use our products?

Any advice would be great?

Sincerely,
Nathan Clark


--
Nathan Clark
QA Automation Analyst Tech team
Accessibility assistant
CPACC
cell: 410-446-7259
email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
101 Village Blvd
Princeton, NJ 08540
SMBE & Minority Owned Business

From: Lucy GRECO
Date: Thu, Oct 27 2022 10:27AM
Subject: Re: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
← Previous message | Next message →

hi no we do not like full day training we are bissy people and have our
hands full you should however be working with clinits like edu they want
this information badly


Berkeley IT <https://technology.berkeley.edu/home>

Lucy Greco, Web Accessibility Evangelist

Campus IT Experience
Phone: (510) 289-6008 | Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = |
https://webaccess.berkeley.edu Follow me on twitter @accessaces

We champion diversity. We act with integrity. We deliver. We innovate.



On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 9:23 AM Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
wrote:

> This varies greatly depending on the culture of the company. I view
> continuous personal development as absolutely essential, so I used to give
> new testers 15 days off in their first year to do a variety of courses. In
> their second year I used to put them on a 3-day classroom-based course.
> After that, they typically did a few one-day courses and 4 to 6 days of
> conferences each year. We would also do lots of shorter in-house training
> sessions, from perhaps 30 minutes to a full day.
>
> Now that we provide training courses, we find that some companies are
> willing to do the same - one put 10 people on a 4-day classroom-based
> course. However, others don't want to spend more than 1 to 2 hours, so I
> have often had to rip the guts out of a 1-day course to deliver what I can
> in a quarter of the time. Inevitably, this tends to leave little or no time
> for exercises that would help embed the knowledge. These companies never
> want to do the full course content in chunks, and I assume they just want
> to be able to say they have provided training and don't care how effective
> or comprehensive it is.
>
> To answer your question, I would offer both the full day of training and
> the short videos, then monitor the demand and effectiveness of each. If you
> can show that people still need a lot of support despite having viewed the
> videos, you would then have a case for making the full day mandatory
> (assuming the quality of the video-based training is as good as it can be).
>
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > On Behalf Of
> Nathan Clark
> Sent: 27 October 2022 16:19
> To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> Subject: [WebAIM] best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
>
> Dear list,
>
>
> Sorry for the long post.
>
> My company has two products Jira and Confluence. We have an accessibility
> plug in named unstoppable that makes both Jira and Confluence accessible
> for blind screen reader users. Our CEO at the beginning of the year wanted
> us to do half/full day trainings on both unstoppable for Jira and
> Confluence. However after doing this experiment for every month since may
> we have had 0 people attend our last 3 monthly sessions. Some of us within
> the company originally suggested at the beginning of the year that instead
> of doing the all day trainings that we either create short couple minute
> videos of our unstoppable product in action with Jira and Confluence and
> post it to our website and social media sites so people can view it instead
> of sitting in these half/full day trainings. Our CEO told us that we had to
> do the full day trainings and it did not turn out well for us in terms of
> the attendance. Our CEO said that the accessibility community loves full
> day trainings!!! Is this true?
>
> I was wondering if people could tell me what they think is more beneficial
> for companies to do full day trainings or create short videos with quizzes
> to help teach people how to use our products?
>
> Any advice would be great?
>
> Sincerely,
> Nathan Clark
>
>
> --
> Nathan Clark
> QA Automation Analyst Tech team
> Accessibility assistant
> CPACC
> cell: 410-446-7259
> email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> 101 Village Blvd
> Princeton, NJ 08540
> SMBE & Minority Owned Business
> > > at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
> > > > > >

From: Uniquely Abled
Date: Thu, Oct 27 2022 10:33AM
Subject: Re: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
← Previous message | Next message →

Make sure the videos are audio-described.

On 10/27/22, Lucy GRECO < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> hi no we do not like full day training we are bissy people and have our
> hands full you should however be working with clinits like edu they want
> this information badly
>
>
> Berkeley IT <https://technology.berkeley.edu/home>
>
> Lucy Greco, Web Accessibility Evangelist
>
> Campus IT Experience
> Phone: (510) 289-6008 | Email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = |
> https://webaccess.berkeley.edu Follow me on twitter @accessaces
>
> We champion diversity. We act with integrity. We deliver. We innovate.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 9:23 AM Steve Green < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> wrote:
>
>> This varies greatly depending on the culture of the company. I view
>> continuous personal development as absolutely essential, so I used to give
>> new testers 15 days off in their first year to do a variety of courses. In
>> their second year I used to put them on a 3-day classroom-based course.
>> After that, they typically did a few one-day courses and 4 to 6 days of
>> conferences each year. We would also do lots of shorter in-house training
>> sessions, from perhaps 30 minutes to a full day.
>>
>> Now that we provide training courses, we find that some companies are
>> willing to do the same - one put 10 people on a 4-day classroom-based
>> course. However, others don't want to spend more than 1 to 2 hours, so I
>> have often had to rip the guts out of a 1-day course to deliver what I can
>> in a quarter of the time. Inevitably, this tends to leave little or no
>> time
>> for exercises that would help embed the knowledge. These companies never
>> want to do the full course content in chunks, and I assume they just want
>> to be able to say they have provided training and don't care how effective
>> or comprehensive it is.
>>
>> To answer your question, I would offer both the full day of training and
>> the short videos, then monitor the demand and effectiveness of each. If
>> you
>> can show that people still need a lot of support despite having viewed the
>> videos, you would then have a case for making the full day mandatory
>> (assuming the quality of the video-based training is as good as it can
>> be).
>>
>> Steve Green
>> Managing Director
>> Test Partners Ltd
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: WebAIM-Forum < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > On Behalf Of
>> Nathan Clark
>> Sent: 27 October 2022 16:19
>> To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>> Subject: [WebAIM] best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
>>
>> Dear list,
>>
>>
>> Sorry for the long post.
>>
>> My company has two products Jira and Confluence. We have an accessibility
>> plug in named unstoppable that makes both Jira and Confluence accessible
>> for blind screen reader users. Our CEO at the beginning of the year wanted
>> us to do half/full day trainings on both unstoppable for Jira and
>> Confluence. However after doing this experiment for every month since may
>> we have had 0 people attend our last 3 monthly sessions. Some of us within
>> the company originally suggested at the beginning of the year that instead
>> of doing the all day trainings that we either create short couple minute
>> videos of our unstoppable product in action with Jira and Confluence and
>> post it to our website and social media sites so people can view it
>> instead
>> of sitting in these half/full day trainings. Our CEO told us that we had
>> to
>> do the full day trainings and it did not turn out well for us in terms of
>> the attendance. Our CEO said that the accessibility community loves full
>> day trainings!!! Is this true?
>>
>> I was wondering if people could tell me what they think is more beneficial
>> for companies to do full day trainings or create short videos with quizzes
>> to help teach people how to use our products?
>>
>> Any advice would be great?
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Nathan Clark
>>
>>
>> --
>> Nathan Clark
>> QA Automation Analyst Tech team
>> Accessibility assistant
>> CPACC
>> cell: 410-446-7259
>> email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>> 101 Village Blvd
>> Princeton, NJ 08540
>> SMBE & Minority Owned Business
>> >> >> at http://webaim.org/discussion/archives
>> >> >> >> >> >>
> > > > >


--
"If you want lightning to strike twice, you need to plant more
lightning rods,"-Keven J. Anderson

From: Dudas, Carolyn
Date: Thu, Oct 27 2022 1:18PM
Subject: Re: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
← Previous message | Next message →

Based upon my training experience, sessions generally should not be longer than 1 hour --- whether online or in-person. Attention spans are too short. And anything longer than that tends to result in information overload and people zone out.

So you might want to consider breaking down the all day sessions into shorter time segments and maybe offer them over several weeks. It would also be helpful if the sessions were recorded (and, of course, made accessible).

It's also helpful if the sessions are interactive --- allow enough time for questions and maybe a 1-question quiz periodically to see if they understood the topic.

Short videos (5 - 15 minutes) are effective as well. However, they are a lot of work to produce if you want them to come off smoothly --- especially if you are a 1-person team (like me) that has to write the script, record the video, edit the video, created associated training materials, etc.

Whether doing an online, in-person, or a recording, always provide a quick overview of the topic (don't dig deep --- you won't have time for that) and then demonstrate the task. You want your audience to feel comfortable that they can do the task on their own after attending the session or watching the recording. (If you need to dig deeper into a topic, that should be a separate session/video.) If you have supportive materials, be sure to provide those (handouts, links to resources, who to contact for help, etc.).

One thing I found helpful in terms of captioning was to upload my videos to Office 365 Stream and let it automatically create the transcript and captions. It's extremely accurate and easy to correct any errors. Then make your videos available to your audience in Stream. (Be aware that if you download the video from Stream to use elsewhere, you will lose the captions.)

Hope this helps.

--------------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 11:18:46 -0400
From: Nathan Clark < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: [WebAIM] best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
Message-ID:
< = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Dear list,


Sorry for the long post.

My company has two products Jira and Confluence. We have an accessibility plug in named unstoppable that makes both Jira and Confluence accessible for blind screen reader users. Our CEO at the beginning of the year wanted us to do half/full day trainings on both unstoppable for Jira and Confluence. However after doing this experiment for every month since may we have had 0 people attend our last 3 monthly sessions. Some of us within the company originally suggested at the beginning of the year that instead of doing the all day trainings that we either create short couple minute videos of our unstoppable product in action with Jira and Confluence and post it to our website and social media sites so people can view it instead of sitting in these half/full day trainings. Our CEO told us that we had to do the full day trainings and it did not turn out well for us in terms of the attendance. Our CEO said that the accessibility community loves full day trainings!!! Is this true?

I was wondering if people could tell me what they think is more beneficial for companies to do full day trainings or create short videos with quizzes to help teach people how to use our products?

Any advice would be great?

Sincerely,
Nathan Clark


--
Nathan Clark
QA Automation Analyst Tech team
Accessibility assistant
CPACC
cell: 410-446-7259
email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
101 Village Blvd
Princeton, NJ 08540
SMBE & Minority Owned Business

From: Lars Ballieu Christensen
Date: Thu, Oct 27 2022 2:18PM
Subject: Re: best ways to do accessibility trainings virtually
← Previous message | No next message

IMHO, the whole notion that the accessibility community as a whole should have certain preferences seems absurd. On size fits one. Make it accessible, thing about pedagogics and make sure people can adjust to fit own preferences and abilities.

Venligst/Kind regards

Lars
----
Lars Ballieu Christensen
RÃ¥dgiver/Adviser, Ph.D., M.Sc., Sensus ApS
Specialister i tilgængelighed/Accessibility Consultants
Tel: +45 48 22 10 03 – Mobil: +45 40 32 68 23 - Skype: Ballieu
Mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = – Web: https://www.sensus.dk

Vi arbejder for et tilgængeligt og rummeligt informationssamfund
Working for an accessible and inclusive information society



On 27/10/2022, 17.18, "WebAIM-Forum on behalf of Nathan Clark" < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = on behalf of = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:

Dear list,


Sorry for the long post.

My company has two products Jira and Confluence. We have an
accessibility plug in named unstoppable that makes both Jira and
Confluence accessible for blind screen reader users. Our CEO at the
beginning of the year wanted us to do half/full day trainings on both
unstoppable for Jira and Confluence. However after doing this
experiment for every month since may we have had 0 people attend our
last 3 monthly sessions. Some of us within the company originally
suggested at the beginning of the year that instead of doing the all
day trainings that we either create short couple minute videos of our
unstoppable product in action with Jira and Confluence and post it to
our website and social media sites so people can view it instead of
sitting in these half/full day trainings. Our CEO told us that we had
to do the full day trainings and it did not turn out well for us in
terms of the attendance. Our CEO said that the accessibility community
loves full day trainings!!! Is this true?

I was wondering if people could tell me what they think is more
beneficial for companies to do full day trainings or create short
videos with quizzes to help teach people how to use our products?

Any advice would be great?

Sincerely,
Nathan Clark


--
Nathan Clark
QA Automation Analyst Tech team
Accessibility assistant
CPACC
cell: 410-446-7259
email: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
101 Village Blvd
Princeton, NJ 08540
SMBE & Minority Owned Business