Please take a moment to read Blackboard Inc.’s page on Accessibility. It ends on this note:

Our commitment to accessibility is reflected in our regular engagement in an accessibility discussion group with a consortium of universities and our mandate that all new development ensure accessibility and standards compliance.

A document named the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (“WCAG”), published in 1999 by the World Wide Web Consortium (“W3C”, the body that defines html and related languages) details the industry best practices for the creation of web pages accessible to all users. Following the WCAG results in web sites that are more usable by disabled and non-disabled users alike.

According to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes:

These advisory notes are issued by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (“HREOC”) under section 67(1)(k) of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (“the DDA”), which authorises HREOC to issue guidelines for the purpose of avoiding discrimination. These advisory notes are intended to assist people and organisations involved in developing or modifying Worldwide Web pages, by making clearer what the requirements of the DDA are in this area, and how compliance with them can be achieved.

And then later in the HREOC’s notes:

The Commission believes that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines that have been developed by the W3C Consortium provide the most comprehensive set of benchmarks for assessing the accessibility of websites, and represent current international best practice in accessible web design.

So you don’t have to take it from me that the WCAG is the authority on accessibility. You can take it from the HREOC, under authority of the Disability Discrimination Act, which I will mention in a minute.

With those brief definitions out of the way, lets critically examine Blackboard Inc.’s self professed commitment. To start with, the HTML of their accessibility page is invalid. At the time of writing, the W3C’s validator showed 65 errors. This violates WCAG 3.2.

3.2 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars. [Priority 2]

More importantly, the page does not provide alt text for its images. This is a violation of WCAG 1.1, arguably the highest priority guideline, and also the easiest with which to comply.

1.1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element… [Priority 1]

The navigation menu at the top of the page is implemented in JavaScript. It fails to render correctly and is unusable in the absence of JavaScript. This is in violation of WCAG 6.3.

6.3 Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported. If this is not possible, provide equivalent information on an alternative accessible page. [Priority 1]

I’m sure the page fails to meet other WCAG guidelines that I haven’t considered as thoroughly as the above. I believe that there is something profoundly hypocritical about an accessibility page that is so hostile towards disabled users. Now, you might point out that I’ve only looked at Blackboard Inc.’s website and not their Blackboard Academic Suite itself. That’s a good point, let’s have a look at the Blackboard login page at the University of Newcastle.

Again, the page is invalid. At the time of writing it has 12 errors, a violation of WCAG 3.2. Again, the page doesn’t work without JavaScript, in fact, it’s impossible to even login without JavaScript. A serious violation of WCAG 6.3. Once logged in, the internal pages are no better.

According to the University’s web accessibility statement (which happens to be invalid and does not provide alt text):

the University of Newcastle believes in making its website accessible to as many users as possible. This includes people with a disability.
In an attempt to raise awareness of the issues involved in website accessibility for people with a disability the ACCESSIBLE WEB site has been created.

The link to the “ACCESSIBLE WEB site” is, of course, broken. Is this broken link indicative of the University’s faux commitment to accessibility? I think so.

Section 22 Subsection 2 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 states that

it is unlawful for an educational authority to discriminate against a student on the ground of the student’s disability by denying the student access, or limiting the student’s access, to any benefits provided by the educational authority.

Section 22 Subsection 2A states that

it is unlawful for an education provider to discriminate against a person on the ground of the person’s disability by developing curricula or training courses having a content that will exclude the person from participation.

Section 5.2 of the Disability Standards for Education 2005 states that

the education provider must take reasonable steps to ensure that the student is able to participate in the courses or programs provided by it, on the same basis as a student without a disability, and without experiencing discrimination.

Section 6.2 states that

the education provider must take reasonable steps to ensure that the course or program is designed in such a way that the student is, or any student with a disability is, able to participate in the learning experiences (including the assessment and certification requirements) of the course or program.

Is the University of Newcastle’s use of Blackboard unlawful? Please, read the act and decide for yourself.

In an article published in The Sun-Herald April 13, entitled Students’ uphill battle: Why disabled are leaving university in droves, University of Newcastle deputy vice-chancellor (services) Sue Gould is cited as saying that the University’s facilities were up to Australian Standards. Even the most cursory reading of the Standards shows Ms Gould to be mistaken.

What is the solution? One is to stop using Blackboard. It needs to be stated that if blackboard were not invalid and inaccessible, it would be far more usable by non-disabled students and disabled students alike. As the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines state,

following [the guidelines] will also make Web content more availble to all users, whatever user agent they are using or constraints they may be operating under.

If you’re still reading at this point (well done and thank you), please take a moment to read Moodle’s Accessibility page. You might note that Moodle’s accessibility page is actually valid and accessible.

Moodle, like Blackboard, is an online learning management system. Moodle, unlike Blackboard:

• is Australian
• is Free software, released under the GNU General Public License
• is cross platform (both server and client side)
• is free of charge
• is valid, accessible and inclusionary.

Speaking of inclusion, Moodle supports more than 70 languages. According to Blackboard Inc.’s Language Pack page (also invalid & inaccessible), Blackboard supports just more than 10 languages, two of which are “Pirate Arrr” and “Pig Latin”. It’s nice to know they have their translation priorities right.

Why Newcastle, why?