Course Outline
Course prerequisites
Technical knowledge of web design or development.
Course objectives
At the end of the course students should have the ability to:
- Design and develop accessible websites, including the:
- Development of accessible cascading style sheets (CSS)
- Creation of accessible multimedia content using captions and transcriptions
- Development of accessible forms and CAPTCHAs
- Use of attributes to make images and tables accessible
- Enabling of web authoring tools
- Audit websites against international accessibility standards, the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0), recently adopted by the Australian Government
- Understand the principles of usability and accessible web development, and the different ways that people with disabilities access the web
- Understand accessibility legislation and standards compliance in Australia and internationally
Learning modules
- Web accessibility: importance and benefits
- Policy and legislative frameworks
- Practical guidelines
- More advanced techniques for web accessibility
- Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0
- Future standards, including HTML 5 and WAI-ARIA
Assessment
Students must complete three graded practical assessments focusing on:
- Project analysis report 1 (25%): User experience and WAI-ARIA (due end week 2)
- Project analysis report 2 (35%): Enabling accessibility tools and captioning (due end week 4)
- Major project (40%): Creating a prototype accessible website and testing compliance (due end week 6)
Course formats
The course will be delivered online, with students taking part in online discussions with lecturers and students and participating in practical activities.
Course time commitment
As the course is completely online and has no set hourly commitments each week, participants have freedom with their time spent on the course. However, it is recommended participants allow about three hours per week to read modules and participate in activities. There is one assessment every fortnight which would probably require a couple of hours additional to the normal three hours per week to complete.
Learn from the experts
Dr Denise Wood - Associate Head of School, Teaching and Learning/ Senior Lecturer
Dr Scott Hollier - Media Access Australia Project Manager and Advisory Committee representative, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Dr Hollier is also legally blind.
Registrations are now open for the April 2013 course. To enrol, download the Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility registration and payment form (DOCX, 76KB) and email it to us by Tuesday, 26 March 2013.