Bay Path University takes very seriously the matter of course accessibility. “Accessible” means that a person with a disability can interact with and complete coursework you design equally well as a person without a disability. We expect all students to have the proper tools to succeed in every course. By being deliberate in our course design and intentional in applying universal design principles, we can ensure we are setting students up for success and maintaining compliance with accessibility laws. Designing content for adaptive courses is especially important since concepts should be shown in a variety of delivery models – text, audio, video, activities, etc. Each of these forms of content should be equally accessible.

Common Forms of Disabilities

When curating and creating content, it is important to consider some broad categories of disabilities. Each learner has different abilities when it comes to:

• Sight
• Hearing
• Touch and motion
• Symbolic processing (reading)
• Cognitive/Neurological (i.e. Dyslexia, ADHD, etc.)

As such, all content should be accessible to learners who use technologies such as screen readers (text-to-audio, i.e.), captions (audio-to-text, i.e.), and keyboards for navigation.

Laws, Compliance, and Consequences

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended in 1998 with additions related to accessibility with technology. Referred to as Section 508, this accessibility law requires that electronic and information technology are easily navigated by people with disabilities. Content should be delivered with an equal alternative if the original format is deemed inaccessible. For example, the addition of subtitles for a video, or providing a written script to an audio file, would give adequate, equal alternatives to their original format.

Also known as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 requires that people with disabilities are provided with equal opportunity. Without providing equal learning opportunities for our students, we could be viewed as discriminating against them.

The Department of Education requires that all higher education institutions comply with Sections 504 and 508; lack of compliance could result in sanctions and lack of federal funding. Noncompliance can be revealed during an accreditation review, or with a simple student complaint.

For example, a blind student was unable to access digital course materials within an online course at  Louisiana Tech course and no alternatives were provided. The case was raised all the way up to the Department of Justice and the university was required to pay the student $23,000 in damages and make significant changes to their course materials.

To avoid keeping our students from achieving their academic goals, it is critical to keep accessibility in the forefront of our thoughts while developing online courses.

Standards

The Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG 2.0 AA) provide a number of standard guidelines for creating accessible online content. Many of the systems in use at Bay Path University comply with these standards. Even so, there are criteria that you should keep in mind as you curate and create content in your course design project. For example:

• Make web pages appear and operate in predictable ways
  • Use the header, body, etc. formatting styles in Word and other authoring tools
  • Format lists as lists by using your authoring tool’s bulleted or numbered list function
  • Use the table tool and add column headers
• Make text readable
  • Use high-contrast color combinations (black/white, e.g.)
  • Do not use text color to convey meaning
  • Use readable fonts and font sizes
    
• Provide alternatives for time-based and non-text media
  • Add captions and descriptions for videos
  • Provide a transcript for audio recordings
  • Provide a description of images and graphs
  • Add a description for the purpose and outputs of an interactive tool
• Provide users enough time to read and use content
  • Ensure that video, audio, and animations have control buttons that allow learners to fast forward, rewind, pause, etc.
• Write math and science equations accessibly
  • This is a special case of the above standard. Many equations are embedded as images or use special characters. Ensure you provide alternative text or descriptions. For example: an asterisk (*) in an equation would appear as “multiply” in your description.
• Ensure content can be navigated with a keyboard
  • Any action that can be done with a mouse must also be possible without a mouse

Steps to Make Sure a Resource is Accessible

PDF Documents

In many cases in online learning, the materials identified will come in the form of downloadable PDF files of various sorts of readings: textbook chapters, journal articles, etc.

There are a few quick checks that you should make to ensure that the PDF you’ve identified is accessible:

1. Is it actually a PDF? | In some cases, the files you find for a reading might not be PDFs at all, but could be some sort of image file (.jpeg, .png, etc.). These will not be translated by screen-readers or other assistive technology, and an alternative should be found.
2. Is the text selectable and/or searchable? | Try highlighting different sections of the text with your cursor and see if you can copy-and-paste segments of text from the PDF into your word-processor. If you are successful, then the text is very likely to be picked up by screen-readers.
3. Try out a screen-reader! | If you have access to one, see if a screen-reading utility you have is successful in reading from the PDF.

Image and Video Captions

For images—in addition to providing a good caption—you should write a description of the image to use as alternative text. You should also ensure that any videos or audio you wish to include have accurate subtitles and or a transcript. For multimedia found on YouTube and similar video sites, check to see if the video has subtitles provided and watch for 30 seconds to make sure those subtitles match up. The same criteria should be checked for any images or videos that you create that you wish to include within a template.

Inside Higher Ed has posted an extremely relevant article, 5 Tips for ADA-Compliant Inclusive Design, which could be used as a guideline for determining accessibility for your resources you want to use.

If you find a resource for your course design project that is inaccessible, such as a video without captions, you should contact your Instructional Designer (ID). Your ID will let you know if:

• There is a quick way for you to make the resource accessible on your own
• We have resources to make the resource accessible for you, or
• There is no expedient way to make your resource accessible. In that case, you should begin to search for a new resource.