[Draft] Module 2: Structure in Content Author Modules, Curricula on Web Accessibility

Introduction

Courses based on this module should:

demonstrate how people with disabilities rely on headings, paragraphs, lists, and other structures to understand, navigate, and process content
explain accessibility requirements related to content structure

Students should be able to:

explain how people with disabilities rely on headings, paragraphs, lists, and other structures to understand, navigate and process content
provide headings to help users identify the different content sections
employ accessible authoring tools that:
- support the inclusion of headings, lists, paragraphs, and other content structures
- produce appropriate markup for headings, lists, paragraphs, and other content structures
collaborate with developers and designers to ensure visual and non-visual perception of content structures , including headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes, and others

Skills required for this module:

Topics to achieve the learning outcomes:

[Intro paragraph TBD].

Students should be able to:

provide headings and their corresponding rank levels to help users identify the different content sections
write descriptive and meaningful heading text depending on the heading purpose
employ accessible authoring tools that produce appropriate markup for headings and their corresponding rank levels
identify related requirements for designers and developers to ensure visual and non-visual perception of headings

Optional ideas to teach the learning outcomes:

Discuss different ways of structuring pages and documents. Explain how these structures relate to headings in the content. Discuss headings and their corresponding rank levels. Explain that it is good practice to use heading level one for including the information of the page title. Some tools automate this process, some require the author to do it manually.
Explain some uses of heading text. These include entitling a given section, providing a headline for a piece of news, and summarizing the content the heading precedes.
Show examples of how headings may appear visually. Explain that predefining the styles is a designer’s and author tool vendor’s responsibility. If the author changes these styles, they must ensure they are accessible.
Introduce accessible authoring tools that produce appropriate markup for headings. Explain that changing the font size alone does not produce an accessible heading. It is more efficient to rely on the tool’s built-in functionality and then change the style later. Explain that some tools may produce accessible content but may not be accessible themselves and vice versa.

Optional ideas to assess knowledge:

Short Answer Questions — Ask students about situations where they would use headings. Assess how students identify situations where headings can be used.
Practical — Have students include headings using a given authoring tool. Assess how students rely on the tool’s built-in functionality to include headings.

[Intro paragraph TBD.]

Students should be able to:

explain how people with disabilities rely on paragraphs and lists to understand and process content grouping
group related content using:
- paragraph structures to group thematic units
- unordered lists when the item numbering is not relevant
- ordered lists when the item numbering is relevant

[««< HEAD

Optional ideas to teach the learning outcomes:

Optional ideas to teach the learning outcomes:

Explain different uses of paragraphs to group thematic units. Explain that providing the paragraphs is an authors responsibility, defining how these paragraphs look like is a designers responsibility, and implementing markup for these paragraphs is a developers responsibility.
Explain uses of ordered lists (where numbering does not matter) and unordered lists (where numbering matters). Explain that providing these lists is an authors responsibility, defining how these lists look like is a designers responsibility, and implementing markup for these lists is a developers responsibility. ]»»> content-author-modules

Optional ideas to assess knowledge:

[««< HEAD [TBD] =======

Short Answer Questions — Ask students about different uses of paragraphs and lists. Assess how students recall different uses of paragraphs and lists.
Practical — Give students a set of related items where numbering matters and a set of related items where numbering does not matter. Ask them to provide the correct type of list for each.. Assess how students use ordered and unordered lists. ]»»> content-author-modules

Optional ideas to assess knowledge:

Short Answer Questions — Ask students about the structural units that exist and their purpose. Assess how students recall the structural units that exist and how they explain their purpose.
Portfolio — Have students create a page with accessible content structures, including headings, paragraphs, and lists. Assess how students include accessible headings, paragraphs, and lists in their pages.

Suggested resources to support your teaching:

Writing for Web Accessibility – Introduces some basic considerations to help you get started writing web content that is more accessible to people with disabilities.
How People with Disabilities Use the Web — Describes some of the barriers that people encounter using the Web; and introduces types of assistive technologies and adaptive strategies that some people use.
Understandable Content (Web Accessibility Perspective) — Is one of the Web accessibility perspectives videos that show accessibility features and how they impact people with disabilities.
WCAG — Address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.