At SimBio, we are committed to helping all students learn biology. To this end, we have incorporated a number of accessibility features into our software and continue to both research and implement new tools and features to increase the accessibility of our interactive content. The current feature set is summarized below, as well as on our VPAT® form. Please see our statement below discussing the challenges involved in making our software fully accessible, and the accommodations we offer.
Accessibility Features in SimBio’s Software include:
- All of our images and other graphics are run through filters during the development process to make sure they are visible to individuals with various forms of color-blindness.
- We are almost 100% keyboard accessible.
- Both narration and captions are provided for all animations and videos. (SimBio materials are fully accessible for deaf users.)
- Materials are self-paced and include meaningful error messages.
- We are screen-reader compatible, and images and many interactives have alternative text.
- Instruction, assistance, and financial support are available, where needed for instructors, collaborating students, and tutors to assist students with accessibility challenges, to maximize their learning from SimBio’s offerings.
The interactivity and open-endedness of many of our discovery-based simulation activities confer important learning benefits to students and also present significant challenges toward the goal of full accessibility. Our interactive software uses sophisticated dynamic simulations that students experimentally manipulate to explore and learn biological processes. It is not feasible to incorporate narration of what is happening for students, because most of the processes are inherently random and dynamic. Providing keyboard controls (rather than relying on a mouse) to manipulate simulated experimental tools is also challenging, because, as in real life, experiments often depend on unpredictable yet precise spatial positioning.
We are committed to researching ways of making biology teaching tools more accessible. In fact, we completed a National Science Foundation funded study (NSF #0942822) investigating ways of using audio to convey information in time-series graphs. Unfortunately, our results brought to the fore just how difficult this is, rather than providing straightforward solutions. While we continue to investigate ways of making our content more accessible, in lieu of some magic-bullet technology, we believe providing accessibility support for educators is the best path for making our tools more universally accessible.
We design our software to promote collaboration between students. Collaborative problem-solving, combined with training for instructors, teaching assistants, tutors, and fellow students, is an effective accessibility accommodation. When instructors have students challenged by aspects of the software interface, we work with the instructors to help them guide a collaborator in how to work together with that student. The guidance includes explaining what aspects of the visual results the collaborator should describe to students who cannot see the screen, how to include the student in solving exercises posed by the software, and what important decisions the student should participate in making. If needed, SimBio will help pay for the time spent by the collaborator being trained. While a blind student would not be able to directly control the tool, a sighted student could describe what is being seen. (A blind undergraduate who consulted on our NSF study was a student in a course that used our simulated labs. She was the note-taker in her group and remembered the key concepts a year later when we met her.) As a bonus, there is a body of research showing that student collaboration on active-learning tasks, such as those that form the foundation of our interactive teaching tools, leads to greater learning gains than students working individually. Thus, both the student who has accessibility issues and their collaborator are likely to learn more by working together than either would learn working independently.
If collaboration between students is not an option to aid accessibility, we will brainstorm other options for tutor help for the student and help pay for that if necessary.