Designing information technology accessible to all learners and/or available on mobile devices has sometimes posed a dilemma for instructional designers and managers alike. In the case of compliance with accessibility regulations—spelled out in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d)—designers have sometimes abandoned innovative instructional strategies in favor of those that will support accessibility, specifically for vision-impaired learners who often need to use assistive technologies like screen readers. Similarly daunting are the format challenges for training that will work in both full-screen and smaller mobile device formats. A solution now exists for both these situations.
A recent research and development project took the position that instructional designers should have the freedom to design multimedia training as creatively and effectively as they wish, regardless of the audience and/or format constraints, and enlist technology to adapt or enhance the final product to meet the needs of all learners. This capability is found in the XML-based language known as Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT).
XSLT is used to generate alternative document formats (HTML, for example) from an existing XML document. This transformation is accomplished dynamically and the new format is populated with the original content. The result is a second accessible version (screen readers, mobile devices, etc.) of the training created "on the fly" with no impact on the original multimedia version.
Development efficiencies and cost reductions are intrinsic to this solution, if the training is built from a library of instructional interaction templates. Once an XSL Transformation has been developed for a standard instructional interaction, any training developed with that same template will generate an accessible version for the vision-impaired which is also formatted for display on a mobile device. The authors reference a recent project for illustration and present lessons learned and recommendations for implementation.