Keywords

1 Introduction

Most universities in the United States are adopting online components in their education curriculum. Many studies have shown that online courses could produce equivalent learning outcomes compared to traditional, face-to-face courses [1]. However, a major benefit from online learning is that it provides greater access than traditional classrooms [2]. For example, if students are able to access their textbooks online and retrieve class information online, they will have convenient access to their learning materials. In addition, students could save money due to the reduced costs associated with producing electronic materials. However, the online course materials must be accessible for the students to be able to maximize their potential use.

Originally, web accessibility was thought to be primarily important for people with disabilities because it allows this group of users to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with online materials. It has been demonstrated, however, that improving web accessibility not only benefits people with disabilities, but it can also benefit other groups of people, including older users and users accessing information under restrictive conditions or even on mobile devices [3]. Although federal regulations are available for providing minimum accessibility requirements [4], when considering e-learning for post-secondary education, broader accessibility issues need to be considered. First, it is important to determine how accessible a learning material is for individuals who use assistive technologies versus those who do not. Beyond this comparison, measuring the degree of accessibility provided by different e-learning materials is also key. A final issue to consider is whether the optimal accessibility tools identified for one type of format (e.g., HTML) are ideal for use with other formats (e.g., EPUB or PDF). In this study, we take the first step at examining these issues by evaluating the accessibility tools that are available for checking different accessibility components of e-textbooks in different formats.

E-textbooks are usually beneficial for students because, in comparison to printed textbooks, e-textbooks cost less and can be accessed from different locations and from various web-enabled devices (e.g., desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile device). For example, the California school system (California State University, University of California, and California Community College) has enacted legislation to promote the use of e-textbooks, with the “goal of making higher education in California more affordable by providing faculty and students access to free and lower-cost instructional materials” [5]. This legislation supports students’ access to free e-textbooks and will likely to increase the number of users who regularly access e-textbooks for their classes. Although EPUB, HTML and PDF are common e-textbooks formats, at the time of this writing, no accessibility tools or guidelines for evaluating the accessibility of e-textbooks across all of these formats have been released.

Current guidelines are available for web-based content, but these guidelines may not be directly applicable to specific e-textbook formats. Several accessibility evaluation tools are available on the market for people to use for conducting accessibility evaluations, but there has been little research illustrating the effectiveness of each of these tools [4]. Moreover, many of these accessibility tools cannot be used in an automatic fashion (i.e., press a button and receive results). Rather, the tools need to be used by human accessibility evaluators and these evaluators have to perform manual checks and make judgements of accessibility based on the outcomes. Most importantly, we are not aware of standard accessibility techniques that available for evaluating e-books in different formats. To fill this gap in the literature, the goal of this project was to develop a methodology for evaluators to determine the level of accessibility of e-textbooks in different formats.

We will present two phases of the present project: (1) accessibility tool review and (2) instruction manual creation. In the first phase, we compiled an inventory of existing tools that were available to evaluate different aspects of e-books, using a SkillsCommons checklist. The SkillsCommons checklist includes a list of 15 checkpoints that evaluators should assess when determining the overall accessibility of a product (refer to Tables 1, 3 and 4, for details about each checkpoint). The SkillsCommons accessibility checkpoints were developed by the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) project, and WCAG 2.0 guidelines. The checklist has been used for evaluating the accessibility of electronic text and media on the web [6]. In the second phase, we describe the methods used to develop accessibility manuals for e-textbook evaluation.

Table 1 Comparisons of candidate non-assistive color and contrast tools based on price and compatibility (yes or no) with different e-textbook formats
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2 Phase One: Accessibility Tool Review

2.1 Method

A total of 10 human factors students were involved in the checkpoint tool/method review and evaluation phase. The students worked in 4 groups of 2–3 students each. Their task was to find existing tools that can be used to evaluate a subset (3–4) of the SkillsCommons accessibility checkpoints (see Fig. 1 for flow model). Some of the checkpoints could be assessed using non-assistive technologies, and others using assistive technologies. We will describe the methods used for each of these technologies separately below. Each group presented their findings to the entire group and two subject matter experts (SMEs). In consultation with the two SMEs, a subset of tools were selected to be used in the evaluation process based on the availability of the software, functionality, pricing, popularity among users, and our subjective assessment of the reliability of the tools.

Fig. 1
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First stage of manual creation and tool evaluation process

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Non-assistive Technologies. For non-assistive tools, the group found 20 tools. For each checkpoint, we compared the proposed tools based on their functionality and price. Due to the page limitations of this paper, only one example is provided here for the color and contrast checkpoint (see Table 1 for a listing of tools and review criteria). After demonstrating each tool, the group discussed the advantages and disadvantages associated with each tool with the SMEs, and the most suitable tool was selected for each checkpoint. It should be noted that many of the checkpoints needed to be manually checked by the human evaluators.

Assistive Technologies. For checkpoints that required use of assistive technologies, four recommended software tools were compared (see Table 2): JAWS, ZoomText, Kurzweil 3000 and NVDA. These tools were candidates for comparison because they have been identified as the most popular tools that are used by students with disabilities.

Table 2 Comparisons of four popular assistive technologies’ based on format compatibility (yes or no) with different e-textbook formats
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JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader software that converts text and components of the operating system into synthesized speech. JAWS can read text out loud from the computer screen, and can be used to browse the internet, read electronic books, and other materials. JAWS can also be used in telecommunicating and word processing [7].

ZoomText is mainly a screen magnification tool, but it has several other accessibility features. ZoomText allow you to zoom content from 1× to 36× magnification with eight zoom window types. It also includes features such as color, brightness, and contrast controls, visible pointers and cursors, dual monitor support and application-specific settings. Options for human-sound reading voices and automatic document reading are also available [8].

Kurzweil 3000 allows users to read electronic and printed materials. Kurzweil 3000 is an optical character recognition system that displays printed or electronic text on the computer screen. Text can be read by a speech synthesizer or by the user on the computer screen. Kurzweil 3000 has many options such as a dictionary and spell checker. It can also be used in web browsing with an installation of extension [9].

NVDA (Nonvisual Desktop Access) is an open-source, Windows screen reader that uses eSpeak speech synthesizer, SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 synthesizers. NVDA can be used for browsing the internet, telecommunications, word processing and reading electronic books and other materials [7].

2.2 Results

Non-assistive Technologies. The tools selected for non-assistive technologies are shown in Table 3. All of these tools/software are freely available to the general public. We focused primarily on these tools because free tools/software are more likely to be used by organizations such as educational institutions.

Table 3 Selected non-assistive technology tools/methods to be used is accessibility evaluations for e-textbooks
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For each software, we analyzed the usability of the tool. For example, both CCA (Color Contrast Analyzer) and WebAIM contrast checker tools can be used across all e-textbook formats; however, CCA was selected as the best tool because it was easy to use. CCA uses an eyedropper tool that an evaluator can use to select a color from the electronic file and the tool will analyze the extracted color. In contrast, WebAIM requires that the evaluator enter the hex color code for specific color (for example, color white is represented as #ffffff). There were other free contrast checker tools that are available on the market, but most of them were not selected as potential candidates because they required special knowledge of color coding similar to WebAIM.

Assistive Technologies. The tools selected for assistive technologies are shown in Table 4.

Table 4 Assistive technology tools/methods suggestions
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Kurzweil 3000 was determined to be the most popular assistive software among all students due to its functionality and ease of use. Kurzweil, however, is not available to users for free. After comparing JAWS, ZoomText, Kurzweil and NVDA on their functions, we have decided that Kurzweil and NVDA were the best candidates to evaluate the e-textbooks.

Both Kurzweil and NVDA were tested for specific checkpoints with the different e-textbook formats. Kurzweil was found to be most appropriate for evaluating EPUB formats, and NVDA for HTML and PDF formats. Kurzweil was chosen for EPUB evaluations due to its popularity among users and the fact that the other tools have issues with the EPUB reader that was employed for evaluation. The free EPUB reader that was used for non-assistive technology evaluations was Adobe Digital Editions and NVDA did not work well with it. Therefore, we decided to use Kurzweil to evaluate books in EPUB format only. NVDA was selected to evaluate HTML and PDF book formats. NVDA is a free tool that allows users to navigate content with keyboard-only navigation. In addition to these tools, CCA (Color Contrast Analyzer) was selected to evaluate color and contrast across all formats, in both non-assistive technology and assistive technology evaluations, due to its ease of use.

3 Phase Two: Manual Creation

In Phase 2 of this project, we created a manual for each e-textbook format to illustrate how to use the tools selected in Phase 1, and the procedures for additional manual checks that need to be performed when conducting the accessibility evaluations.

3.1 Method

Two students (project leads) re-assessed the selected tools identified from Phase 1 and verified with the SMEs that the tools/methods to use for evaluations were indeed the ideal candidates. Subsequently, a step-by-step manual was created for each format of the e-textbooks, and pilot testing was conducted to make sure these manuals were comprehended by novice evaluators (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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Second stage of the manual creation and tool evaluation process

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3.2 Results

We made minor adjustments relating to clarity to the manual for each e-textbook format based on the feedback from the novice evaluators. We also created an Excel checklist that provides a detailed breakdown of the SkillsCommons checklist and a recommended number of pages of the e-textbook to be checked based on the total number of pages for the book (Fig. 3). The final manuals consist of step-by-step guides on how to evaluate each checkpoint. Each checkpoint has its own section, starting with a short description of what evaluators should be checking for (Fig. 4), and then followed by a step-by-step break down on how evaluators should evaluate the specific checkpoint (Fig. 5 for an example). Screenshots are provided for each step to help novice evaluators (see Figs. 6 and 7 for examples).

Fig. 3
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Excel checklist

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Fig. 4
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Example of checkpoint description

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Fig. 5
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Example of step-by-step breakdown for checkpoints

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Fig. 6
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Example of step-by-step breakdown with screenshots

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Fig. 7
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Example of step-by-step breakdown with screenshots

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4 Conclusion

We have successfully developed a step-by-step manual for three e-textbook formats, EPUB, HTML, and PDF. These manuals can be used by organizations to perform accessibility evaluations. They can also be used as prototypes for creating future manuals and training systems relating to accessibility evaluations.