Building eLearning content for visually impaired users
eLearning in a post-Covid world
As hybrid working models have become commonplace with more staff working from home than ever before, improving your organisation’s training approach is essential to ensure that staff understand and apply current company policies. Whether you are working within an industrial business, financial services organisation, a charity or creating eLearning for health, every sector has specific training requirements and will require tailored content. Training may include operational delivery, regulatory knowledge and also how to protect your organisation from cybersecurity threats such as phishing. With the reduction in face-to-face interactions and training, understanding and taking into account accessibility considerations has never been more important.
What is web accessibility, why is it important and how do I achieve it?
An inclusive team brings a variety of perspectives, which is a benefit to any organisation. This diversity should be as broad as possible, enabling any team member to participate as fully in a training process as anyone else.
When creating eLearning assets, web accessibility should be a core consideration from the start. While the drive to make digital learning as visual as possible is a welcome trend to make content more engaging, it should be complemented with approaches such as contrast options and non-visual material that can be read by tools such as screen readers. As much care should be taken in the creation of accessible learning content so that it is embedded at the start of the process rather than as an afterthought.
While accessibility should be a key part of any course, it is also possible to meet specific requirements - the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG - to give user’s greater confidence by showing that your eLearning content has passed the A, AA or AAA thresholds for web accessibility.
Using screen readers to assist the visually imparied
By using ‘alt-text’ within your content, a screen reader can allow a visually impaired user to understand what is on the page by listening to the content. While alt-text will include important information such as descriptions of text, images and videos, care should be taken with non-text items such as shapes when developing alt-text since it can also narrate unwanted areas such as the page structure or even hidden menu screens!
Building with web accessibility in mind
Embedding accessibility at the very start of the development process always yields the best result. In addition to using alt-text, carefully considering the order that your content should be read out in is crucial. This is called a focus order and is a key part of delivering an accessible experience for the visually impaired.
In addition, the use of colour contrast is essential for any course that meets the demands of WCAG to ensure that it is accessible to visually impaired and colour-blind users, whilst also ensuring that the colours used are easy to read.
When building a course, think carefully at the start of the process about accessibility when developing each part of the content. It’s much easier to take web accessibility requirements into consideration while developing rather than having to revisit the course to make amendments, particularly if you are seeking to make the course WCAG compliant.
How our team can help
The Konnektis team provides end-to-end solutions for eLearning clients, including concept creation, Instructional Design and storyboarding, graphic design, technical development, testing and auditing against WCAG standards.
If you are looking for an experienced team to help your organisation to build engaging, accessible content - or you simply want to understand more about eLearning development in general - then please get in touch by calling 0330 043 0096 or emailing us on team@konnektis.com.
How a care management app can improve your auditing
In addition to enhancing the process for maintaining consistent, live care plans and having integrated care scheduling software, one of the most significant impacts following the adoption of digital care planning software that we have seen over time with domiciliary care providers is improved auditing. From the beginning of the Konnektis journey in 2016, we sought to improve how care teams audit care notes and MAR sheets and save them time in the process.
The number of care management app providers in the domiciliary care sector has increased in the last few years, but what should you expect from your auditing system? Read on to find out what we think.
1. Real-time auditing. While the introduction of digital care planning software brings many benefits to providers, the ability to review care notes and electronic MAR sheets as they are recorded is material. It can have a significant impact on any care organisation. With digital care management platforms, you can say goodbye to blocking out an afternoon to review paper documents days or weeks after a care visit was completed and check visits completed on a care management app within hours or minutes.
Look for a simple interface that can be used on desktop or mobiles so that permissioned team members can audit visits and, where required, triage them for follow-up. Using this approach will help demonstrate how you keep care plans up-to-date to deliver effective person centred care and identify where training improvements may be required to support your care workforce.
2. Ease-of-use. Managing a care business is complex, with your team wearing several hats each day, so any digital care planning software should make your team’s life as easy as possible. While a central audit module is necessary, you should expect to audit visits or create follow-ups from multiple points within the system so that you don’t have to move between screens more than necessary. The goal is to embed your audit tools within your organisation to the extent that auditing happens automatically most of the time and that only important exceptions are flagged for follow-up. All of this can occur in a structured way that is easy to review and evidence for regulatory compliance.
A care management app that has been built - and continues to evolve - with the benefit of customer feedback should make auditing a simple process that saves significant amounts of time, freeing your team to provide the best person centred care to your customers.
3. Easily create and assign follow-up workflows where required. When implemented effectively, digital care planning software should provide a backbone of reliable processes that enables you to provide the highest level of person centred care possible. With a remote workforce and lots of critical data being securely collected every day, a straightforward process for what has been fully audited and what needs more attention is essential.
Your care management app should allow you to create workflows for other team members so that they can easily see where their input is required. As other team members feed into an audit process, all actions taken by the team should be attached to the care visit record to have a clear audit trail about how - and why - decisions have been taken.
For example, there may be evidence of support recorded within the care notes that isn’t reflected in the care plans, indicating that your team should do a care plan review to avoid discrepancies against the day-to-day care being delivered. This reliable process for keeping care plans and electronic MAR sheets up-to-date is vital in any setting, but we see it as having a significant impact for providers of end of life care and reablement care, where a customer’s needs may frequently change.
4. Upload additional information to support decision making. Every day, care teams will interact with a range of people supporting the person receiving care, ranging from family members, to doctors, occupational therapists and district nurses. Few decisions are taken in isolation, and demonstrating what information was available to support a decision should be a key benefit of a digital care planning software platform.
You should be able to add comments as you audit a visit and upload other information that may be helpful securely. Since it will be attached to the service user and the specific visit, if you need to review the care notes in the future as part of a regulatory audit, you will have all the data right in front of you with evidence of how decisions were taken, and what follow-up was required.
5. Data visualisation and flexibility of reports. Every care provider has spent time building their care plans, auditing processes and care workforce training in a specific way to help deliver the most person centred care possible. Each organisation tends to have subtly unique approaches, and so the data requirements will vary. Some providers audit every visit and have a target metric for how long this should take, while others review a selection of their visits immediately if they meet specific criteria.
Your digital care planning software provider should not have a one-size-fits-all approach to data. It should work with you to ensure that you get the information you need, when you need it, and in a format that works for your organisation.
We hope that you found this summary helpful and welcome your feedback. If you would like to get in touch about this article or to find out more about how we can support your care organisation, please email us at team@konnektis.com, or give us a call for a chat on 0330 043 0096.
If you would like to arrange a free trial of the Konnektis platform, which includes access to care plan examples, please click this link to fill out some basic details and one of our team will get you set up.
Top tips to make changing your rostering and care management system easy and stress free
Whilst digital rostering has been commonplace in the care sector for a while, the last couple of years has seen a significant increase in the number of providers moving away from pen-and-paper visit notes and medication records to digital care management systems. There are various approaches to replacing pen-and-paper, such as carer apps and connected hubs that sit in the customer’s home. This digital transition will only increase, given the continuing pressures of Covid-19.
Many providers currently have several separate systems: one for rostering, one for care plan management and auditing, and potentially a separate HR system. While this can work well if the integrations between them work seamlessly, we see greater customer demand for more integrated approaches that give the care teams simple ways of coordinating every aspect of their care accessible in one place.
With time and effort invested in the set-up and day-to-day management of a technology system, moving to a new provider can seem daunting. It doesn’t need to be, with some simple planning to ensure you have access to the right information and a straightforward migration of data.
If you are considering moving away from your existing provider of rostering and care plan management software, this 5-step process can help:
1. Get the basics right by mapping Service Users and Care Workers. The key pillar of any successful transition is making sure that you have your Service User details imported into your new system, together with the Care Workers that will be providing support to your customers. Ideally, you will want to import key data such as Service User contact information, address, date of birth and next-of-kin for Service Users and contact details for Care Workers. The easiest way to do this is typically by exporting a type of file called a CSV, which you can usually download from your existing supplier’s system. Most integrated care management software will then import this data so that your key information is set up with no manual intervention.
Tip: To meet your CQC requirements have a plan to access data collected before any transition to your new system, including for Service Users that may have been archived. Many systems will enable you to import old data, which is worth doing so that all your information is in one place should you get a CQC inspection.
2. Map your Service User daily tasks and medications. Once you have your user details in place, you and your new software supplier will be in a great position to import all of the tasks and medications that a Care Worker will need to have available to them during their visit. It is important to get this right, and you shouldn’t need to re-create your appointment templates in a new system since the data should be available to download from your old system. Like the mapping of users, this information is usually available as a CSV export and can be accessed directly from your existing supplier’s software.
3. Re-create your most recent care runs so that they can be imported into your new rostering system. Care is about people, and one of the key skills of running any homecare business is knowing your staff and getting the consistency of care and the match right between your customers and care teams. This knowledge can take years to build up and certainly shouldn’t get lost during any software move, nor should you need to re-create it manually. Different systems present this information in varying ways. Still, you will be able to either extract the recent care runs from your rostering system or if a current provider limits the time periods that can be downloaded, your new provider can work with you to get care run data over time so that it can be imported into your new system.
Tip: Many rostering systems will have the ability to create rules, including staff availability. Make sure that you extract this data so that your first weeks on a new system work seamlessly.
4. Use the opportunity to move away from Word care plans, or migrate your existing documentation structures. For many providers, care plans, risk assessments, and other documentation is a big issue, absorbing many hours per week to update information in the office if still using word-processed documents. While they capture the key information, using traditional tools such as MS Word doesn’t capture the data within a structure, has little/no version control or auditing and doesn’t allow any meaningful analytics that gives you insights into your business processes. Modern software can do better, particularly in a regulated environment such as care where consistency of approach is key.
A move to a new system gives an excellent opportunity to bring your processes up-to-date by moving to a forms-based structure for your documents so that they are consistent with information captured as data at every point. It will also save you time and money from the very start.
If you are currently using MS Word, your new software provider will normally build an import structure for you so that you don’t have to spend weeks manually transcribing data. Once this is in place, any new provider with dedicated in-house technical development will then be able to import your MS Word documents against your new form structure and, bingo, you’ll have care documentation fit for the 21st century!
If your existing provider already uses form structures for your care plans, the transition will be even easier. You will need to download your form structure from your current system (typically, this may be a CSV or a file type called JSON) and then your new provider can import your data against it.
5. Give your team confidence and minimise training risk by working with your new provider to identify common practices. Moving to a new digital care planning software provider can seem like a big change, but it doesn’t need to cause friction within your team. Most systems out there now will have features in common, even if the layout is different. By identifying what is similar between your existing system and your new, more integrated one, you can work with a new supplier to deliver a training programme for your staff that builds on what they already know.
Tip: We have experimented with various training techniques over time, and we find that a ‘train-the-trainer’ typically works best, which is even more relevant given Covid constraints.
Approached in the right way, moving to a new system should be simple, relatively straightforward and stress-free, and it shouldn’t need much manual input from a care provider.
Konnektis provides an integrated care plan management, rostering and documentation system that has been built from the ground up with the input of care teams, Service Users and families.
While we would welcome an opportunity to speak with you about our system, we are keen to ensure that care providers get the best input to make decisions with confidence. We know that moving providers can seem like a lot of work with lots of new technical jargon so if you would like a chat, have any questions or would like to see some care plan examples that may be helpful to your organisation, please get in touch at team@konnektis.com, or call us on 0330 0430096.