Project - SENDA

VLE Project | Introduction:

"Return to SENDA? Implementing accessibility for disabled students in virtual learning environments in UK further and higher education"

This study, which combines an extensive literature and web review with a survey and interviews, reveals a widespread lack of accessibility in VLE materials. The inaccessible elements are both within the VLE software itself, and within the content the institutions put into the VLEs. This lack of accessibility is shown to have a number of origins, principal amongst them:

- a lack of awareness within FE and HE about the needs of disabled students
- a lack of user-centred design processes (on the part of VLE developers and education institutions)
- a lack of knowledge of web technologies on the part of VLE content authors
- a general ‘skills gap’ in the area of instructional design, and
- a lack of strategic leadership within institutions in tackling the overall issue of inclusive learning and teaching.

A series of recommendations for ways to tackle these and other causes of inaccessible learning provision is addressed to the principal VLE stakeholder groups.