The evaluation process

We created course sites using each of the four LMSs, Blackboard 4, Blackboard 5, Prometheus 3, and WebCT 3. Each course site review included pages with instructor-entered information, program-controlled pages (such as the login page, course access page, tools or utilities pages, etc.; also called inherent pages), the discussion board, the chat program, and instructor entry pages.

The review consisted of three major parts. Any one will give an answer to whether a program is accessible or not...but only in reference to a particular law or guideline, or to a specific extent. Certain guidelines were easier to determine with one review over the others. Only the SNOW method considers the ability of instructors to make their course materials accessible. We think that by doing all of them, we received a much fuller picture of the accessibility of the LMS. However, any one alone will help you determine a program's accessibility.

The SNOW method gives a numerical statistic of the extent of accessibility in regards to W3C/WAI guidelines. It gives higher priority elements a greater weight. It also considers the placement of accessibility options, such as if something is required to be entered or is a hidden option. The SNOW method was written for LMSs, so allows us to review both inherent aspects of the program as well as instructor-entered information. Frankly, no matter what standards of accessiblity a program meets, if it does not allow the instructor to make materials accessible, the course web pages will not be accessible. With this review, we can look at the extent to which the program allows or encourages instructors to make materials accessible. For example, take alt text on images. An LMS that includes alt text on all of the images for the program would pass this standard of the W3C/WAI guidelines and of Section 508. But what happens to the images used within course material? If the program does not allow alt text to be attached to these images, the other reviews do not "see" this. But a very important part of the SNOW method takes this into account. The other reviews look solely at the inherent features of the program. This method is the most involved, making sure we review all parts of the LMS thoroughly.

The accessible browsing review tells us whether a specific program that is used by disabled persons can access the LMS. We checked each LMS with two of the most popular accessible ways to browse the web, JAWS and HomePageReader (HPR), plus Lynx, which is comparable to accessing with very low end, text-only browsers. These programs function differently than does a regular browser. There were inaccessible elements that we found only through the use of these other programs.

For validation, we had two reviews, with a third added in Fall 2001. One is the program A-Prompt, which analyzes web pages for W3C/WAI violations. This was able to find some problems that we did not detect on our other reviews, since it looked solely at the code. We also used a checklist of the W3C/WAI guidelines. While these guidelines also comprise the SNOW method, this checklist was an all-or-nothing. In Fall 2001, we will also use a Section 508 checklist. The previous review methods assisted in the checklists.