Online Version Available Free of Charge
(http//ncam.wgbh.org/salt)

Boston, MA. September 19, 2002. A groundbreaking collaboration among
international players in the online learning field has resulted in a set of
guidelines to educate the eLearning community about the challenges that
people with disabilities face in accessing online education, and to provide
solutions and resources to solve them.  Major support of these efforts is
provided by the Learning Anywhere Anytime Partnerships program* of the
U.S.  Department of Education. "IMS Guidelines for Creating Accessible
Learning Technologies" is a joint publication of the IMS Global Learning
Consortium, and the CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM).

The IMS Guidelines are available on the Web in a screen-reader friendly
format as well as in PDF (http//ncam.wgbh.org/salt) and are expected to be
an invaluable resource for a broad range of stakeholders in online
education, including educators providing online learning materials,
developers of learning software such as learning management systems and
educational software, and educational publishers, content authors,
authoring tool developers and parents, advocates and students with
disabilities themselves. Users will find the IMS Guidelines a comprehensive
source on accessibility, which includes principles for accessibility in
online learning, accessible delivery of text, audio, images and multimedia,
using XML for accessibility, and legal issues for accessible distance learning
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End of announcement
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Barrier-free E-learning is an online month-long course provided by EASI
devoted to exploring the problems and solutions for making e-learning
accessible to people with disabilities.  The next offering starts on
November 4.
http://easi.cc/workshops/bfel.htm

Norman Coombs, Ph.D.
CEO of EASI
http://www.rit.edu/~easi