Welcome to CTAD website!

Our philosophy is that accessible learning materials are of benefit to all learners, not just those with disabilities. We do not believe that producing accessible learning materials need result in materials being less engaging, interactive or visually appealing.

Our accessibility strategy is a practical one, requiring us to seek the best and most fit-for-purpose level of accessibility that we can for each specific project. The core of our strategy is based on the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI) guidelines, and we regularly produce learning materials for clients (such as Becta and Learning and Teaching Scotland) who specify a minimum level of WAI-AA compliance.

As standard, we expect to support:

• screen-readers, including Jaws and Windows Eyes
• materials that can be navigated using only the keyboard
• a variety of switch technologies designed to help people who find a mouse or keyboard difficult to use
• user control to allow personalisation of background and foreground colours, font size etc.

When developing Flash content, we also make full use of Flash’s accessibility options. These include:

• providing text descriptions of information-bearing page elements
• specifying a logical tab order through materials
• providing appropriate keyboard shortcuts.

Where appropriate, we also provide built-in audio support and/or accessible alternatives to the Flash content. For some projects we have taken Flash accessibility beyond its standard capabilities. For example, as part of our work for the Portland Partnership we have developed Flash-based e-learning for students with severe learning disabilities that has built-in scanning in order to support single-switch use.