How often have you worked on ID projects where the design is still not frozen (or per one of the final reviewers, the design seems ok; however, review from another reviewer is still awaited) and the management waves a green flag to the content development team? Trust me, I have, more often than not. It typically happens when an organization outsources its training needs to another organization that is good/professional at developing, designing, and delivering training.
Management at the training team side wants to optimize the time that team members are billing on the project and it also intends to impress the client by delivering development pieces ahead of the training timeline. On the other hand, client reviewers, whose key responsibilities are different than training development, park performing reviews for a later, rather relaxed time. Situation: Content team creates design that is ready for review; however, (full) review does not come through per the timeline. Implication: Management gives a go ahead for content development since the design timeline has passed. The development starts in full flow, unsure of the validity of the design on which it is to be based. Complication: Complete design review is received a couple of days, sometimes weeks (yes, that happens), later and it indicates some major changes to topical outline, objectives, and even learning strategy, of the training. Result: Rework. The development team gets defensive and feels demotivated. However, this is the situation (not the best one, agreed) wherein a training team can learn a lot about the client, their preferences, reasons for their preferences, and their thought process for selecting an approach over another, in addition to sharing their own reasons for designing the training approach as they did---many a times clients also learn a thing or two about training by interacting with the training development team. By being defensive, most of the teams lose on the opportunity to interact with client to understand their requirements at this stage. Often, the development team works towards merely fixing the review comments just for the sake of it. My suggestion: Utilize this scenario/time to (a) understand what the client review essentially shares---what is good/not so good about the design, what the client desires, why does the client need what it is asking it does---and, if need be, (b) negotiate---may be timelines, budget, resources, etc. (Given that the design review arrived later than the timeline, depending on how late it came through, it will have timeline/monetary implications.) And to avoid running into situations like these, have a good dialogue with client at the beginning of the project, emphasizing the importance of having one key work product frozen/signed off before working on the next, dependent work product(s); e.g., a frozen design before starting to work on training development; frozen development templates before beginning to script content in them, and so on. In addition, consider developing (if absolutely necessary) only the parts of training for which you are sure that the design will not change.
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Monday, October 12, 2009
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Benjamin Bloom, leading a group of educational psychologists, published taxonomy of learning behaviors in 1956 (when he was 44---just a trivia thrown at you) and ever since, educators and teachers are creating learning materials and assessments that, respectively, teach and test the learners for particular skills. This taxonomy was named ‘Bloom’s taxonomy.’
Bloom’s taxonomy identifies three domains of learning---in other words, it mentions that there are primarily three types of learning:
I have so far used Bloom’s taxonomy for the cognitive domain; and therefore owing to my limited exposure, this is the area I will touch upon in this article.
Cognitive Domain
Bloom’s taxonomy classifies cognitive thinking into six levels of complexity. Each level is signified by a noun and is hierarchically arranged. Each succeeding level builds on the preceding level and is thus more complex. Unless you have mastered the preceding level, moving on to the next succeeding level successfully is fallacious. You can use these levels as an effective framework to build learning objectives and assessments for a learning piece.
Let’s look into these levels first to understand how the learning objectives and assessments can be designed around them.
Bloom Levels
The six definitive levels (a.k.a. stages or skill sets) addressed in the cognitive domain are:
Wording the Course Competencies and Assignments
The verbs, mentioned against each Bloom level, identify the cognitive level at which the learning material is aimed. In other words, the choice of verbs indicates the level of learning that a learner will attain after taking the learning. You, as a course writer, can use these verbs to write your course competencies, learning objectives or outcomes, and the assessments. The learner, on the other hand, can take a closer look at the verbs used in the learning outcomes (of the course syllabus) to understand what the course has to offer and what (level) he or she is expected to achieve after taking the course. So, the verbs in the learning objectives of your learning piece define what your learner will learn.
For each Bloom level, there are certain activities that are more appropriate than the others as assignments. Next, let’s look at those activities.
Designing the Course Assignments
While designing assignments or assessments, here are the activities that can be used to demonstrate the respective level of learning:
Bloom Levels 1 and 2 (lesson objective or competency is knowledge and comprehension)
Bloom Level 4 (lesson objective or competency is Analysis)
Conclusion
Bloom’s taxonomy has found multiple uses and wide acceptance. At the same time, it has experienced lot of criticism primarily because it is the first classification of education to come up with different domains and levels of thinking, feeling, and doing. In spite of the criticisms and numerous alterations, modifications, and suggestions to the original Bloom’s taxonomy, it remains the most understood, accepted, and applied technique in the field of creating learning objectives and designing assessments. The biggest proof for it being the client requirements for designing the learning courses---most of the clients ask the course to be developed and assessed on Bloom level and I am yet to come across a client that asks to work on a taxonomy other than Bloom’s (no offence meant for the modifications to Bloom; I just want to state that it is working so far in its originally stated form).
Bloom’s taxonomy identifies three domains of learning---in other words, it mentions that there are primarily three types of learning:
- Cognitive Domain: This is the intellectual domain that deals with the thinking part of the learning. It has to do with the knowledge that a person has or gains. The skills that a person acquires in (or owing to) this domain are used more in science and commerce subjects.
- Affective Domain: This domain deals with the attitude of the learner---this is the emotional part of the learning so to speak. It has to do with how a person feels about something, say a piece of art. The skills that a person acquires in (or owing to) this domain are used more in humanities or arts subjects.
- Psychomotor Domain: This domain deals with the manual or physical skills of a learner. It concerns whether the learner is able to ‘do’ things; such as, creating something by hands, e.g., a sculpture. The skills that a person acquires in (or owing to) this domain are used more in sports and drama.
I have so far used Bloom’s taxonomy for the cognitive domain; and therefore owing to my limited exposure, this is the area I will touch upon in this article.
Cognitive Domain
Bloom’s taxonomy classifies cognitive thinking into six levels of complexity. Each level is signified by a noun and is hierarchically arranged. Each succeeding level builds on the preceding level and is thus more complex. Unless you have mastered the preceding level, moving on to the next succeeding level successfully is fallacious. You can use these levels as an effective framework to build learning objectives and assessments for a learning piece.
Let’s look into these levels first to understand how the learning objectives and assessments can be designed around them.
Bloom Levels
The six definitive levels (a.k.a. stages or skill sets) addressed in the cognitive domain are:
- Knowledge: At this level, the learner is able to recall the information delivered---the learner remembers ‘who, what, where, when’ from the learning. For this Bloom level, the verbs you can use to design the learning objectives and assessments: list, identify, define, describe, recognize, select, state (remember what is taught). Example: What are the six stages of cognitive learning in Bloom’s taxonomy?
- Comprehension: At this level, the learner is able to reword the learning in his or her own words because now he or she has understood the learning. For this Bloom level, the verbs you can use to design the learning objectives and assessments: explain, summarize, reword, understand, paraphrase, generalize, exemplify (not only recall what is taught but also comprehend and understand it). Example: Explain the need of Bloom’s taxonomy in the corporate and education sector.
- Application: At this level, the learner is able to use or place the learning in a new environment---the learner applies the learning to outside-the-classroom environment. For this Bloom level, the verbs you can use to design the learning objectives and assessments: use, produce, solve, produce, apply, demonstrate, prepare (apply the learning to a new situation). Example: Demonstrate how you moved up the different Bloom levels for a new skill that you learned lately.
- Analysis: At this level, the learner looks at the learning independently---the learner is able to differentiate between facts (the absolute) and inferences (the subjective or the relative; point of views by others). At this time, the learner disintegrates the learning into chunks that make more sense of the organizational structure of the learning. For this Bloom level, the verbs you can use to design the learning objectives and assessments: analyze, compare, contrast, examine, deconstruct, differentiate, infer (able to look at the learning from a critic’s and independent point of view). Example: Compare and contrast the LOTS and HOTS of the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy.
- Synthesis: At this level, the learner creates something new. This is the time when learner reuses information of different types in a new, novel manner. For this Bloom level, the verbs you can use to design the learning objectives and assessments: develop, synthesize, create, design, compile, generate, devise (make an original piece of work, contribute something anew---in verbal or physical form). Example: Create a new classification system for the cognitive domain.
- Evaluation: At this level, the learner judges views and works. For this Bloom level, the verbs you can use to design the learning objectives and assessments: review, judge, justify, interpret, defend, evaluate, support (wear a judge’s hat and review the content for assessment). Example: Review Bloom’s taxonomy for writing effective course objectives and assessment.
Wording the Course Competencies and Assignments
The verbs, mentioned against each Bloom level, identify the cognitive level at which the learning material is aimed. In other words, the choice of verbs indicates the level of learning that a learner will attain after taking the learning. You, as a course writer, can use these verbs to write your course competencies, learning objectives or outcomes, and the assessments. The learner, on the other hand, can take a closer look at the verbs used in the learning outcomes (of the course syllabus) to understand what the course has to offer and what (level) he or she is expected to achieve after taking the course. So, the verbs in the learning objectives of your learning piece define what your learner will learn.
For each Bloom level, there are certain activities that are more appropriate than the others as assignments. Next, let’s look at those activities.
Designing the Course Assignments
While designing assignments or assessments, here are the activities that can be used to demonstrate the respective level of learning:
Bloom Levels 1 and 2 (lesson objective or competency is knowledge and comprehension)
- For non-gradable assignments, you can use ‘Background probe.’ It is better to starts at LOTS at the beginning of the course; so, you can ask them questions with which they would be familiar with---ask about their educational and skill level background, any previous knowledge related to the subject that they might have---this is the background probe and covers Bloom levels 1 and 2: knowledge and comprehension. Students will write what they already know (level 1) and understand (level 2). Generally background probe is not graded and is used to check whether the students have the right knowledge and understanding; if yes, it is perfect; if no, it becomes an area for intervention---the facilitator should correct the misconceptions and the wrong knowledge.
- For grading, you can use quizzes, MCQs, and fill in the blanks. Here, you can just ask the learners to identify or list whatever they have been taught in the introductory lesson.
- MCQs
- Essay questions
- Short class project
Bloom Level 4 (lesson objective or competency is Analysis)
- Essay questions
- Case studies
- Class or group projects
- Project
- Portfolio
- Performance
- Reflecting on creations by self
- Evaluating others work
- Doing Cost benefit analysis (CBA)
Conclusion
Bloom’s taxonomy has found multiple uses and wide acceptance. At the same time, it has experienced lot of criticism primarily because it is the first classification of education to come up with different domains and levels of thinking, feeling, and doing. In spite of the criticisms and numerous alterations, modifications, and suggestions to the original Bloom’s taxonomy, it remains the most understood, accepted, and applied technique in the field of creating learning objectives and designing assessments. The biggest proof for it being the client requirements for designing the learning courses---most of the clients ask the course to be developed and assessed on Bloom level and I am yet to come across a client that asks to work on a taxonomy other than Bloom’s (no offence meant for the modifications to Bloom; I just want to state that it is working so far in its originally stated form).
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Creative Writing
After writing a couple of articles with a technical bend, I thought writing on a topic that would involve lesser technicalities to it. I chose ‘Creative writing’ as it drew my attention a couple of months back and ever since this is the one non-technical article I wished to write on.
Often, instructional designing and content development jobs call for ‘creative writing’ as one of the skills. This, I think, is probably so because (a) creative writing can be a yardstick to identify a good writer (prerequisite for a sound content writer and instructional designer) and (b) a content writer is expected, many a times, to base the learning around a context, a theme, or a narrative---such part of learning can be effectively created if the content writer is a good raconteur. With this moderate understanding, I thought of delving more into the subject of ‘creative writing’ and share my improved understanding with you.
So, what is creative writing? It is any kind of writing (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, travel, music, and so on) that is not academic, professional, or journalistic in nature. It is the kind of writing that an author does to express thoughts, feelings, and imagination and not to merely represent facts and figures. Creative writing is the first step to improve the skill of writing---writing, which is the basic element of content development and instructional designing.
The major chunk of creative writing is about writing a story, a narrative. Creative writing is something that all fiction writers invariably do. In a typical piece of creative writing, there are some seven basic elements of narrative that often appear: plot, characters, dialogue, setting, point of view, theme, and style. Let’s learn a bit about them.
Elements of Creative Writing
Plot: It is the sequence of events that govern the direction that the piece of art (narrative) takes. Chances are that a good plot will be able to save not-so-good writing however vice versa is considerably tough---a poor plot cannot be camouflaged by a well-written narrative. Usually, a plot will unfold the events and turns of the story in a chronological manner; you can however use flashbacks as well to treat your narrative differently. The climax that yields an addressing (one that binds and resolves the different angles of the plot) end to a progressive narrative makes an interesting read.
Characters: These are the human and non-human entities that play different roles in the plot. Introducing the characters early in the narrative is better---the main character earlier than the other characters. Chances are that if your reader can identify with one or more characters in the plot, the reader gets more glued to the narrative. So, check your characters in a manner that your readers can identify with.
Dialogue: It includes the sentences and phrases that are used as a part of the conversation between the characters of the narrative. The more dialogues a character has, the more important the character becomes. So, give your lead characters dialogues in a manner that the reader spends more time hearing to those characters. The main character should be given more dialogues and to the rest, as the plot demands. This was about the quantity, now let’s understand the quality. Each character is identified by the kind of language (dialogue) that he or she uses and also when he or she chooses to use these dialogues. Therefore, the dialogues should convey the feel of the character to the reader. It is better that the author does not pen down the character as sketched in his or her mind---the dialogues and accompanying expressions written by the author should hint toward the character. The narrator should present rather than spoon feed the characters to the readers. The judgment about a character should be the prerogative of the reader.
Another very vital point to remember is that you (the writer) should use dialogues purposefully---either to build the characters or to move the plot ahead or both. Dialogues that do not have a purpose or would not make difference to the plot if taken out are better left out.
Setting: It is the era or time, place, and backdrop in which the narrative happens. The setting sets the context in which the plot runs. Also, the dialogues and sketch of characters are often influenced by it. For a basic narrative, usually there is one setting to the whole plot. In other narratives, however, there might be multiple settings and it is better that the narrator introduces every setting before the respective (sub)plot begins.
Point of view: This is how the narrator sees that characters. Now, with that said, the point of view can be of various types: (a) first person point of view allows the main character to be the narrator or a secondary character to be the narrator for the main character (In this case, the narrator gives intimacy to the story however this can be limiting for the reader because the reader will be able to view the character through the narrator’s eyes.); (b) third person point of view gives the allowance that the narrator be (i) objective (just tell the story as is without telling the emotions and feelings that characters experience---describe only the actions) or (ii) omniscient (tell the story with actions as well as the inner feelings and emotions of the characters ).
It is wise that narrator does not impose his or her take on the characters; however, he or she should state the facts that led him or her to take that view point. The judgments should not be passed from the narrator’s words; the readers should be given space to make their own judgments.
Theme: It is the meaning and flavor that your narrative carries. The events that happen in the narrative will add and build its theme. Theme cannot be conveyed by words alone in the narrative; it builds with different incidents that happen in the plot.
Style: It is how you use the language to express yourself. A consistent style, in a narrative, is always way more impressive than the idea to have different, fancy styles in one piece of literary art. It is good to have a good hold on English; however, it is better to use precise, specific, and short words to express rather than to use long, convoluted, poetic, and flamboyant language. Remember to move the story ahead using the language rather than have emphasis on language and leave the plot on the fate of words. The string that holds a good story is the plot; and the style ensures that the string looks beautiful.
Tips for Creative Writing
Happy Writing!!!
Often, instructional designing and content development jobs call for ‘creative writing’ as one of the skills. This, I think, is probably so because (a) creative writing can be a yardstick to identify a good writer (prerequisite for a sound content writer and instructional designer) and (b) a content writer is expected, many a times, to base the learning around a context, a theme, or a narrative---such part of learning can be effectively created if the content writer is a good raconteur. With this moderate understanding, I thought of delving more into the subject of ‘creative writing’ and share my improved understanding with you.
So, what is creative writing? It is any kind of writing (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, travel, music, and so on) that is not academic, professional, or journalistic in nature. It is the kind of writing that an author does to express thoughts, feelings, and imagination and not to merely represent facts and figures. Creative writing is the first step to improve the skill of writing---writing, which is the basic element of content development and instructional designing.
The major chunk of creative writing is about writing a story, a narrative. Creative writing is something that all fiction writers invariably do. In a typical piece of creative writing, there are some seven basic elements of narrative that often appear: plot, characters, dialogue, setting, point of view, theme, and style. Let’s learn a bit about them.
Elements of Creative Writing
Plot: It is the sequence of events that govern the direction that the piece of art (narrative) takes. Chances are that a good plot will be able to save not-so-good writing however vice versa is considerably tough---a poor plot cannot be camouflaged by a well-written narrative. Usually, a plot will unfold the events and turns of the story in a chronological manner; you can however use flashbacks as well to treat your narrative differently. The climax that yields an addressing (one that binds and resolves the different angles of the plot) end to a progressive narrative makes an interesting read.
Characters: These are the human and non-human entities that play different roles in the plot. Introducing the characters early in the narrative is better---the main character earlier than the other characters. Chances are that if your reader can identify with one or more characters in the plot, the reader gets more glued to the narrative. So, check your characters in a manner that your readers can identify with.
Dialogue: It includes the sentences and phrases that are used as a part of the conversation between the characters of the narrative. The more dialogues a character has, the more important the character becomes. So, give your lead characters dialogues in a manner that the reader spends more time hearing to those characters. The main character should be given more dialogues and to the rest, as the plot demands. This was about the quantity, now let’s understand the quality. Each character is identified by the kind of language (dialogue) that he or she uses and also when he or she chooses to use these dialogues. Therefore, the dialogues should convey the feel of the character to the reader. It is better that the author does not pen down the character as sketched in his or her mind---the dialogues and accompanying expressions written by the author should hint toward the character. The narrator should present rather than spoon feed the characters to the readers. The judgment about a character should be the prerogative of the reader.
Another very vital point to remember is that you (the writer) should use dialogues purposefully---either to build the characters or to move the plot ahead or both. Dialogues that do not have a purpose or would not make difference to the plot if taken out are better left out.
Setting: It is the era or time, place, and backdrop in which the narrative happens. The setting sets the context in which the plot runs. Also, the dialogues and sketch of characters are often influenced by it. For a basic narrative, usually there is one setting to the whole plot. In other narratives, however, there might be multiple settings and it is better that the narrator introduces every setting before the respective (sub)plot begins.
Point of view: This is how the narrator sees that characters. Now, with that said, the point of view can be of various types: (a) first person point of view allows the main character to be the narrator or a secondary character to be the narrator for the main character (In this case, the narrator gives intimacy to the story however this can be limiting for the reader because the reader will be able to view the character through the narrator’s eyes.); (b) third person point of view gives the allowance that the narrator be (i) objective (just tell the story as is without telling the emotions and feelings that characters experience---describe only the actions) or (ii) omniscient (tell the story with actions as well as the inner feelings and emotions of the characters ).
It is wise that narrator does not impose his or her take on the characters; however, he or she should state the facts that led him or her to take that view point. The judgments should not be passed from the narrator’s words; the readers should be given space to make their own judgments.
Theme: It is the meaning and flavor that your narrative carries. The events that happen in the narrative will add and build its theme. Theme cannot be conveyed by words alone in the narrative; it builds with different incidents that happen in the plot.
Style: It is how you use the language to express yourself. A consistent style, in a narrative, is always way more impressive than the idea to have different, fancy styles in one piece of literary art. It is good to have a good hold on English; however, it is better to use precise, specific, and short words to express rather than to use long, convoluted, poetic, and flamboyant language. Remember to move the story ahead using the language rather than have emphasis on language and leave the plot on the fate of words. The string that holds a good story is the plot; and the style ensures that the string looks beautiful.
Tips for Creative Writing
- Give your readers at least one character they can identify with. Readers are quick and glad to recognize a character that they can identify with: themselves, a relative, a friend, or a neighbor, and so on. It adds to the zest of reading.
- Start as close to the beginning as possible. There is nothing more exciting than to read a piece that is fast moving and lets its readers know that the end is about to approach. If your readers experience the adrenaline rush by the fast paced treatment of your narrative, consider your story an interesting read.
- Use your sentences wisely to communicate more information with fewer words. Your sentences should yield information about characters and move the story forward in a word-efficient manner. Remove redundancy and make your story a crisp read.
- Try drawing most of your characters from the real life---from your family, friends, relatives, neighbors, your grocery store person, your librarian, your professor, your manager, your colleague, your subordinate. Take ideas from their lives, actions, and behavior to give your characters different dimensions.
- Do not spare your characters. Put your characters in difficult and unusual circumstances, no matter how ideal or nice they are. Give every character a meaning. Remember that your readers will remember the characters who were in difficult situations and went through making tough choices.
- Be alert. Be open to the ideas that run through your mind while you hear people talking in train, bus, parties, and other events.
- Identify your writing time. Get to know the time when you are at your creative best---some people write the best in the morning, while some prefer the night time. Once you know the time you give your best to writing, ensure that you write daily; it does not matter if it is only one small paragraph.
- Be yourself. Write the way you feel like not the way you think you should. Write without imposing any style on your individual style.
- Be a devil’s advocate. Do see your narrative from a non-author view point. Wear a critic’s hat after writing the first draft and correct all the loopholes in the story. Looking from a different view point certainly helps---mistakes that you do not see in your baby might become evident from someone else’s eyes. If you fail to do that, show your narrative to a friend or a colleague who you know will read the story from a different/second pair of eyes.
- Do it now. If you feel you can write a good story and wait for that opportune moment when your creative juices will flow, trust me that day will be as distant as it is today. The right time to start writing is now. Start writing and continue it. After some time of writing, you might feel that you need a break and you might just take it; however, that break might just keep extending. To avoid falling in the dark pit of non-return to writing, think of writing as a job and continue writing even on days you feel you cannot write. A trash-like written paper can be improved however an empty paper cannot be filled for a time gone by.
Happy Writing!!!
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Accessibility: Fancy Philanthropic Effort or More?
Accessibility refers to making the products and services accessible to all, including people with disabilities (PwD) and a lot has been talked about it as a social, philanthropic effort, almost so much so that it sounds like a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative. Do u really think that big companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco, are continuously improving their products, services, and processes w.r.t. accessibility to accommodate only a social cause? Well, I do not think so. Addressing social needs might be one reason…one small reason I would say, however, there is more to such an initiative.
Big companies are claiming to make the outputs of their businesses, such as products (phones, laptops, computerized kiosks), documentation, and services (learning solutions, Web sites), accessible or available almost equally to all, be it a professional, or an older person, or a PwD. And, the reason given for such a move, most of the times, is to provide equal opportunities to all. That, in my opinion, is only partly true.
It Means Business
An important reason for implementing accessibility is the big money involved. As far as the statistics goes, 6% of world population is suffering from disabilities, and around 19% of the U.S. population contributes to this number. Now, these people are customers with special needs who need accessible products and services to make the transactions that other people make. Also, PwD are all the more dependent on Internet and technologically advanced solutions to make their day-to-day operations a bit smoother. Technology can assist them, like other non-disabled people, right from paying off their bills sitting at home to controlling their businesses from a location of their choice. However, PwD need these services more and the reason is obvious. Therefore, if companies are implementing accessibility in their products and services, they are very well capturing a new customer set (PwD) for their products that others did not even consider.
In addition to the customers that companies can capture and satisfy with their accessible solutions, companies can also hire and retain employees who are good at work however did not get hired because the company lacked accessible products and services. Apart from PwD, some people face disabilities because of age—many old people develop certain disabilities with age and if the companies do not retain them as employees just because of their recently acquired disability, companies lose on the expertise that these people have earned through their experience. And this population of aged people is above and beyond the 6% (PwD, worldwide) and 19% (PwD, U.S.) statistics.
Now, think of the revenue that a company can earn by making new customers, catering to them, and retaining diverse employees. And then, philanthropy just becomes one of the peripheral advantages that emerge out of this business need called accessibility.
So, when IBM introduces shortcuts/special buttons on this Think Pad (for people with locomotor disability), or Cisco launches accessible phones (that converts speech to text) for hearing-impaired people, or Microsoft releases Windows Speech Recognition in its Windows Vista (to enable people with locomotor disability to interact with heir PCs by their voice), I think there is more than a social cause to it---it all translates to wider customer base and therefore more business.
Competition Demands It
Another important reason of implementing accessibility is that in these times of severe competition, you cannot and rather would not like to be left behind. All big organizations are involved in addressing needs of PwD, be it visual, auditory, speech, locomotor, neurological, or cognitive disabilities. IBM and Microsoft are actively involved in implementing accessibility in their products since early 1980s. And now Cisco is also joining the bandwagon by having an Accessibility Unit for the organization that takes care of accessibility needs for the organization on whole. When the top-notch players are competing in providing accessible solutions, other companies are bound to follow the suit.
Clients Demand It
Many companies, such as Cisco, have U.S. federal government and other U.S. state governments, as their clients. For these companies, with such clients, it becomes a stated requirement to make their deliverables accessible because they need to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (in U.S.). This act requires all products and services to be accessible to all in the public. With more states and clients asking for accessible solutions, be it in learning or product domain or otherwise, the demand of accessible solutions will rise and an organization can only be ignorant to not proactively learn more about it.
Pleasing Customer
Making the products and services accessible to PwD makes things easier for the other lot too, i.e., people who do not have disabilities. If an organization like Microsoft allows the flexibility to use the IE7 browser in a way that best suits customer’s needs and preferences, it benefits the PwD and others alike. It becomes a comfort for all to be able to customize text, style it, and color it; use keyboard shortcuts; use the zoom in and zoom out functionality for the Web content, and so on. This makes a customer of your product happy and the more customers you please; the more you make your business grow. After all, customer is God.
Accessibility has already gained a lot of momentum within big companies and the medium sized companies as well are catching up with it. The management in the latter should consider proposing accessibility as a part of the solutioning for the client. Because if your product is good and the client intends to use it for long, it might not be very far that the client comes back to you saying he wants to make it accessible and then turning back the wheel would be a tedious process. So, treating accessibility as a solution that a business can offer to make better products and services for PwD and otherwise is a wise thing to do---a wiser business proposal than a philanthropic effort.
Big companies are claiming to make the outputs of their businesses, such as products (phones, laptops, computerized kiosks), documentation, and services (learning solutions, Web sites), accessible or available almost equally to all, be it a professional, or an older person, or a PwD. And, the reason given for such a move, most of the times, is to provide equal opportunities to all. That, in my opinion, is only partly true.
It Means Business
An important reason for implementing accessibility is the big money involved. As far as the statistics goes, 6% of world population is suffering from disabilities, and around 19% of the U.S. population contributes to this number. Now, these people are customers with special needs who need accessible products and services to make the transactions that other people make. Also, PwD are all the more dependent on Internet and technologically advanced solutions to make their day-to-day operations a bit smoother. Technology can assist them, like other non-disabled people, right from paying off their bills sitting at home to controlling their businesses from a location of their choice. However, PwD need these services more and the reason is obvious. Therefore, if companies are implementing accessibility in their products and services, they are very well capturing a new customer set (PwD) for their products that others did not even consider.
In addition to the customers that companies can capture and satisfy with their accessible solutions, companies can also hire and retain employees who are good at work however did not get hired because the company lacked accessible products and services. Apart from PwD, some people face disabilities because of age—many old people develop certain disabilities with age and if the companies do not retain them as employees just because of their recently acquired disability, companies lose on the expertise that these people have earned through their experience. And this population of aged people is above and beyond the 6% (PwD, worldwide) and 19% (PwD, U.S.) statistics.
Now, think of the revenue that a company can earn by making new customers, catering to them, and retaining diverse employees. And then, philanthropy just becomes one of the peripheral advantages that emerge out of this business need called accessibility.
So, when IBM introduces shortcuts/special buttons on this Think Pad (for people with locomotor disability), or Cisco launches accessible phones (that converts speech to text) for hearing-impaired people, or Microsoft releases Windows Speech Recognition in its Windows Vista (to enable people with locomotor disability to interact with heir PCs by their voice), I think there is more than a social cause to it---it all translates to wider customer base and therefore more business.
Competition Demands It
Another important reason of implementing accessibility is that in these times of severe competition, you cannot and rather would not like to be left behind. All big organizations are involved in addressing needs of PwD, be it visual, auditory, speech, locomotor, neurological, or cognitive disabilities. IBM and Microsoft are actively involved in implementing accessibility in their products since early 1980s. And now Cisco is also joining the bandwagon by having an Accessibility Unit for the organization that takes care of accessibility needs for the organization on whole. When the top-notch players are competing in providing accessible solutions, other companies are bound to follow the suit.
Clients Demand It
Many companies, such as Cisco, have U.S. federal government and other U.S. state governments, as their clients. For these companies, with such clients, it becomes a stated requirement to make their deliverables accessible because they need to comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (in U.S.). This act requires all products and services to be accessible to all in the public. With more states and clients asking for accessible solutions, be it in learning or product domain or otherwise, the demand of accessible solutions will rise and an organization can only be ignorant to not proactively learn more about it.
Pleasing Customer
Making the products and services accessible to PwD makes things easier for the other lot too, i.e., people who do not have disabilities. If an organization like Microsoft allows the flexibility to use the IE7 browser in a way that best suits customer’s needs and preferences, it benefits the PwD and others alike. It becomes a comfort for all to be able to customize text, style it, and color it; use keyboard shortcuts; use the zoom in and zoom out functionality for the Web content, and so on. This makes a customer of your product happy and the more customers you please; the more you make your business grow. After all, customer is God.
Accessibility has already gained a lot of momentum within big companies and the medium sized companies as well are catching up with it. The management in the latter should consider proposing accessibility as a part of the solutioning for the client. Because if your product is good and the client intends to use it for long, it might not be very far that the client comes back to you saying he wants to make it accessible and then turning back the wheel would be a tedious process. So, treating accessibility as a solution that a business can offer to make better products and services for PwD and otherwise is a wise thing to do---a wiser business proposal than a philanthropic effort.
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