You do not need to have students with disabilities to make your courses digitally accessible. Accessible content will facilitate learning for everyone. See some suggestions in this publication. More resources on accessibility are available at this Diigo collection.
Category Archives: Accessibility
University May Remove Online Content to Avoid Disability Law
U.S. Justice Department finds that Berkeley MOOCs and YouTube content don’t meet federal requirements. So, the University is planning to remove the content as they think it is too costly co comply. More here.
Most frequently cited violations for online content:
- Many videos do not have captions.
- Many videos lack “an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations or URLs on slides), such as audio description, alternative text, PDF files or Word documents).
- Many documents “associated with online courses were inaccessible to individuals with vision disabilities who use screen readers because the document was not formatted properly.”
- Some videos that had automatically generated captions were “inaccurate and incomplete.”
It is important to consider accessibility guidelines and regulations when designing any content: either for online or on-campus learning.
Discriminatory Design in Education and Educational Technology
As often with the Profhacker posts in The Chronicle, reading the comments is equally interesting as reading the article itself. What do you think? Is your pedagogy discriminating? What about your choice and use of technology? The article is available here, and I hope it encourages you to think of the best design of your course.
Decoding ADA Standards for Classroom AV
Accessibility of AV arrangements is a very timely topic for NU: we are constructing new buildings and modifying existing ones. Following best practice guidelines will improve learning experiences for all of our students. See more details here.
Harvard and MIT Are Sued over Closed Captioning for Online Materials
A new lawsuit accuses Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of failing to provide closed captioning in online teaching materials, in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws, The New York Times reports. The lawsuits were filed by the National Association of the Deaf, and seek an injunction requiring that closed captioning be provided for all online materials.
Accessibility is critically important for all online materials we create!
Accessibility and learning materials
All progressive countries have regulations about providing reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. Let’s follow accessibility guidelines when we use technology and create learning materials in a variety of formats (text, audio, video, etc.). Please follow this link to access resources on accessibility and get started. Let’s make an effort to make education more accessible for all NU students!