Presentation on accessibility in online courses presented to the Central Community College Grand Island Campus.

1. Beyond Accessible
MAKING YOUR COURSE ADA COMPLIANT FOR A BETTER STUDENT
LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Presented by Steven McGahan – UNK eCampus

2. Phase 1
WHY IS ACCESSIBILITY IMPORTANT

3. What is ADA?
 1973 – Rehabilitation Act, Section 504
 1990 – Americans with Disabilities Act
 At its core, ADA is a civil rights issue that affects a significant percentage of
the population of the United States
 It is not about “special treatment”
 It is about inclusion in the same world that every one of us inhabits and
protecting people with disabilities
 ADA sets the rules for providing a “level playing field”
 Accommodations are set through the disability services offices
 Covers both temporary and permanent impairments

4. Who Qualifies?
 A person who:
 Has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits a major life
activity;
 Has a record or history of such an impairment; or
 Is regarded as having such an impairment.
 It is also unlawful to discriminate against someone solely because of
his/her association with an individual with a disability.

5. Types of Disabilities We Will Cover
 Vision
 Hearing
 Mobility
 Learning

6. Disability in Higher Education
 A 2012 study showed that 11% of
higher education students have some
form of disability
 These numbers may also be
underreported
 Those that are reported may also have
multiple disabilities
 2007 data (seen right) shows that
mobility is the largest percentage,
followed by learning, psycho-social,
and vision.
S. Burgstahler, University of Washington, and C. Chang,
University of Hawaii at Manoa

7. Student Responsibilities
 Students must self-identify
 This starts with the disability services
office
 They may need to provide
documentation of their disability
 Students need not self-identify to
their classmates

8. Instructor Responsibilities
 Provide Reasonable Accommodation
to those who are identified as having
a disability
 What is reasonable?
 This is determined primarily by the
disabilities office
 Instructors should work with the
disabilities office when there are
questions about how to
accommodate a student

9. How Does This Affect Teaching?
 The rules laid out in the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504
show clear standards for institutions and teachers in federally funded
higher education
 Institutions and instructors have a responsibility to design courses and
learning materials with accessibility in mind
 While most education based companies have integrated accessibility in to
their products, commercial products may not
 All content, exercises, assignments, etc. should be created/reviewed with
accessibility as a key criteria
 Students need not have an exact experience, but must have an equivalent
experience

10. Proactive Vs. Reactive
Proactive
 Lessens legal exposure
 Creates an environment of inclusion
 Creates fewer “emergency” situations
 Costs more money
 Takes time to develop
Reactive
 Can cost less money
 Saves time by not focusing on all
courses
 Causes more “emergency” situations
 Can cause some students to abandon
their goals
 Increases legal exposure

11. Universal Design
 Universal design is a process for
creating accessible content
 It started in the physical space, but
has moved in to the digital world
 Most of the tenets of Universal Design
can be linked to accessibility issues
from ADA
 Universal Design strives to
accommodate more than just those
with identified disabilities

12. Why Universal Design
Non-Universal Design Universal Design

13. Why Universal Design
 Good design is good design regardless of the population being served
 Usable by the largest range of people
 Increased accessibility for students
 Design improvements can create a better learning environment for all
students
 Technology implementation is easier with Universal Design
 Remember that there are no true universally designed products
 Many ADA considerations are part of good Universal Design

14. Phase 2
EVALUATING EXTERNAL RESOURCES

15. External Websites and Programs
 External websites and programs need
to be chosen with a critical eye
 Run an accessibility checker on
websites to ensure that they are
compatible with screen readers
 When working with a third-party
program, spend time looking at their
accessibility options
 If they have none, look for another
program to use for the assignment
 Most education programs will have an
accessible option

16. Mobility
 Mobility impairment is difficult to
estimate
 These include both permanent and
temporary impairments
 For online courses, these tend to be
the easiest to accommodate
 Students with a mobility impairment
may have issues with test taking,
assignments, and navigation of the
course

17. LMS Considerations
 Always alt tag your images, charts, graphs, hyperlinks, etc.
 Use the built in accessibility tools in Blackboard to make sure your courses
are as accessible as possible before the start of the class
 New design options can make courses prettier, but be sure to consider
issues that may cause problems for various students
 Accommodation for students that require more time is easier than ever
with Test Availability Exceptions
 Using the Blackboard options as much as possible will ensure that your
course is as accessible as possible

18. Strategies
 Allow those with mobility impairments extra time on tests and quizzes
 The use of speech to text programs can assist students with their typing
issues (most if not all will have access to these programs)
 Avoid real-time chats
 Have alternate (equivalent) assignments for those who may have issues
with fine motor skills assignments
 Release assignments early to give students extra time to work on them
 Most of the strategies for mobility issues are linked to time

19. Resources
 Dragon Naturally Speaking
 http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm
 Windows Speech Recognition
 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dictate-text-speech-
recognition#1TC=windows-7
 Macintosh Dictation
 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202584

20. Learning
 Learning disabilities can be difficult to
understand
 Many go undiagnosed until later in
life
 Skills of these students may be
underdeveloped
 Types
 Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia
 Auditory and Language Processing
Disorders
 Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities
 ADHD and Memory Disorders

21. Stars, Rockets, and Moons
 Check out the Moth Podcast episode
“Stars, Rockets, and Moons”

22. Exercise
 When the next slide comes up, use
the legend on the right to read the
text presented
 A copy of this legend will be on the
next slide as well
 See how long it takes to read the text

24. What it says
 This typography is not designed to recreate what it
would be like to read to read if you were dyslexic it is
designed to simulate the feeling of reading with
dyslexia by slowing the reading time of the viewer
down to a speed of which someone who has dyslexia
would read

25. Strategies
 Give due dates at the beginning of the course
 Open materials early
 Do not add last minute assignments, tests, readings, etc.
 Do not move assignments due dates up
 Keep instructions brief and uncomplicated and use the same instruction
text for similar assignments
 Allow time for clarification of instructions/directions

26. Resources
 Accommodating College Students with Learning Disabilities: How Much is
Enough?
 https://www.uu.edu/centers/faculty/resources/article.cfm?ArticleID=116
 Teaching College Students with Learning Disabilities
 http://www.ericdigests.org/2002-3/college.htm
 Helping Students with Learning Disabilities Succeed in Higher Education
 http://blog.cengage.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/06/FALL2007.Gaumnitz.Helping-Students-with-
Learning-Disabilities.pdf

27. Phase 3
CREATING ACCESSIBLE DOCUMENTS

28. Vision
 In 2012 there were an estimated 285
million people in the world with a
visual impairment
 Visual impairment doesn’t mean blind
 Low, altered, or obstructed visions are
included in this category
 Students who are vision impaired may
have issues with images, video, and
text.

29. Screen Readers and Documents
 Documents must be readable by
technology
 Basic design principles allow you to
create accessible documents
 Using the accessibility checker is a
good first step
 Other choices can make your
document “more” accessible
 The secret life of Word Styles!

30. Color Blindness
 8% of males are color blind and .5%
of females are color blind
 Color blindness affects what specific
colors can be seen
 Complete color blindness
(Achromatopsia) is rare, most have
only partial limitations
 Designing for color blindness should
include high contrast in saturation
and brightness, not just hue

31. Color Blindness
 8% of males are color blind and .5%
of females are color blind
 Color blindness affects what specific
colors can be seen
 Complete color blindness
(Achromatopsia) is rare, most have
only partial limitations
 Designing for color blindness should
include high contrast in saturation
and brightness, not just hue

32. Color Blindness

33. Strategies
 Check the accessibility of all of your documents
 Be sure to use high-contrast colors (black on white is the best contrast)
 When creating documents, do not use tables unless you are presenting
data that needs to be in a table
 Use heading formatting for titles, sections, and sub-sections
 Don’t skip heading levels
 Be sure all of your images, audio, video, tables, etc. are alt tagged
 Do not rely on color as a differentiator, use other methods as well
 Use lots of white space between columns

34. Strategies Continued
 Use plain or san serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica) and avoid all script fonts
 Avoid using lots of graphics on a single page
 Be sure to detail important information from graphics in the text of the
document/item
 Make hyperlinks descriptive instead of using “Click Here” or “More”
 Do not create text graphics to replace standard text
 Access to screen readers
 Use textbooks that have a digital or braille option

35. Resources
 Accessibility Checkers
 Office has a built in accessibility
checker
 For PDFs, use the built in accessibility
checker or
http://accessibility.tingtun.no/en/pdfc
heck
 For web pages, use
http://wave.webaim.org/

36. Phase 4
CREATING ACCESSIBLE AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS

37. Hearing
 Approximately 15% of adults aged 18
and over report some hearing loss
 Approximately 5.3% of the people in
the world have disabling hearing loss
 Types of hearing loss include
conductive, sensorial, and mixed
 Students with hearing loss may have
troubles with video and audio

38. Hearing Continued
 Hearing issues can be the most
difficult to address
 The main ways of accommodating
hearing impairment are captions and
transcripts
 These can be costly, time consuming,
or both
 It may be difficult for instructors to
transcribe or caption video and audio
 This tends to be the most reactive
area of accommodation

39. Free and Contracted Services
 Free captioning can be done via
media distribution platforms like
YouTube
 These captions have their own issues
 Rhett and Link
 Companies like 3Play Media and
Caption Associates will caption files
 A newer option is Rev.com
 Affordable captioning through
distributed workload processes

40. Strategies
 Script your recordings ahead of time to provide alternate experience or to
use as captions when putting video/audio online
 Purchase a speech to text program like Dragon Naturally Speaking to
convert your non-scripted recordings to text for captioning
 Make sure that all of your assignments, exercises, etc. have a text option if
you use video/audio
 Captioning is either expensive or time-consuming, be prepared for this
 Auto-captioning is getting better, but still only has, at best, a 90% accuracy
 Use services that allow for captioning of content (YouTube)

41. Resources
 YouTube captioning
 https://support.google.com/youtube/a
nswer/2734796?hl=en
 Caption It Yourself
 https://www.dcmp.org/public_content
/ai/ciy/
 Dragon Naturally Speaking
 http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.
htm
 Transcribing Video/Audio with
Dragon
 http://www.dummies.com/how-
to/content/how-to-transcribe-your-
recording-with-dragon-natur.html
 Captioning Service
 http://www.rev.com

42. Final Thoughts
 ADA issues can be a balancing act
between proactive and reactive
 Many of the tools you will need are
already at your disposal
 Remember that “reasonable” is in the
accommodation rule
 When in doubt, talk with your
disability services coordinator
 Good design is effective for more than
accessibility issues
 Be good to yourself, and each other

43. Thanks for Attending
 Steven McGahan
 Associate Director
 University of Nebraska at Kearney –
eCampus
 mcgahansj@unk.edu
 308-865-8341