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D2L’s Accessibility Lab

Showcasing the philosophy and practice of accessibility at D2L

About the Accessibility Lab

Welcome to Fusion 2022!

We wish you an Aha! experience in D2L’s Accessibility Lab, where we showcase our accessibility philosophy and practice. We hosted an in-person Accessibility Lab for the first time at the Fusion 2019 conference in Kissimmee, FL, featuring hands-on exercises with assistive technologies and much more. We also created this companion website to house information and resources related to the Accessibility Lab. After a hiatus of two years due to COVID-19, the in-person Lab is back again at Fusion 2022 in Boston, MA, with more assistive technologies and hands-on exercises.

In the interim, we built an Online Accessibility Lab as a Brightspace course with virtual hands-on exercises. This course is housed in D2L’s Accessibility Academy in the Brightspace Community Learning Centre. The Learning Centre primarily has secure resources for clients but some courses like the Online Accessibility Lab are offered to everyone.

Visiting the Lab

Fusion 2022 attendees in Boston can visit the Accessibility Lab in Regis on the 3rd floor on July 21 (10 am – 5 pm) or July 22 (9 am – 3 pm). This Lab offers both in-person and online accessibility experience for you. And, you can chat with D2L accessibility experts and discuss your favourite accessibility topics.

Virtual attendees can visit the Online Lab starting July 20. Clicking on the Online Accessibility Lab link brings up the Brightspace Community login screen. Clients with a Brightspace Community account can log in with their credentials and access the Lab course. Others can create a member account with their business or personal email and log in.

Showcasing Brightspace Accessibility

The Labs showcase accessibility features of Brightspace that meet the sensory, physical, and cognitive needs of users.

  1. The Brightspace interface is designed to be perceivable through a variety of sensory modalities. Learners can choose the modality that works for them such as vision, hearing, and/or touch with assistive technologies where required.
  2. The controls in Brightspace are designed to be operable through a variety of physical modes. Learners can choose the mode of interaction they wish to use such as speech, switch control and/or touch according to what works for them or their assistive technologies.
  3. The interface and content in Brightspace are designed to be understandable to users across different cognitive levels. Learners can choose to use the assistive technology they need to augment or replace their capabilities.
  4. The technologies underlying Brightspace are engineered to remain robust enough to work seamlessly on a variety of existing and emerging devices. Learners can choose to learn with ease using any device such as desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone at any time and in any location. We strive to provide everyone with a consistent and delightful user experience.

 

Layout of the Labs

In our online and in-person Labs, we have laid out experiences for you in three sections – Sensory, Physical, and Cognitive – with hands-on exercises to help you consolidate your learning. These sections will help you to systematically understand the constraints people with disabilities might face, the assistive technologies they choose to use, and how Brightspace is designed to meet their needs.

Layout of this website

The next three pages on this website titled Sensory, Physical and Cognitive introduce each of the sections in the Labs. We also have a page on D2L’s Values that explains how our values drive our practice of Inclusive Design and how we support our clients in serving their users through our Full Stack Accessibility framework.