What does accessible mean? The following definition comes from a recent Department of Justice settlement with South Carolina Technical College.

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2 In this presentation we will discuss both the Americans with Disabilities Act and associated accommodations, and Universal Design: the principle that an accommodation for one student with a need can also be beneficial to other learners. We will provide you with concrete strategies for improving your online courses, and will leave with our resource page and where to go for additional assistance. I d like to begin by stating that Marisha and I are Instructional Designers, not lawyers. The legal information we have included in our presentation today comes from research on the Internet, the Chronicle of Higher Education publications and website and from other legitimate news sources. You can find links to learn more about the lawsuits and settlements mentioned on our resource page under Legal Considerations.

3 What does accessible mean? The following definition comes from a recent Department of Justice settlement with South Carolina Technical College. Accessible means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally and independently as a person without a disability. Although this might not result in identical ease of use compared to that of persons without disabilities, it still must ensure equal opportunity to the educational benefits and opportunities afforded by the technology and equal treatment in the use of such technology. This definition can help us to understand what the expectation is for accessibility in online courses. 3

4 Universal Design is an approach to design that has been extended beyond the built environment and applied to pedagogy and evaluation to benefit a broad range of leaners including those with disabilities. For example, a curb cut or ramp, that may have been designed to assist a small group of individuals with a specific need, such as wheelchair users, is actually beneficial to the broader population such as children on bicycles or parents with strollers.

5 If a student in an online course has special accommodations, the student and instructor will work together with Disability Services to ensure that course materials meet the student s needs. This may include transcription of audio content or conversion of written materials to MP3. However, just like a ramp is useful to bicyclists, closed captioning helps English language learners and those who prefer to read rather than listen to lecture content. RoboBraille helps those with visual impairments listen to written text, but also MP3 files created from text can help students with long commutes study while in the car.

6 Universal design and ADA accommodations differ in their purpose and application. 6

7 The terms associated with Universal Design are Pedagogy, Proactive and Serves the general population. The terms associated with Americans with Disabilities Act are Legislation, Reactive and Serves a specific user. 7

8 In this section of the presentation I m going to briefly mention some of the laws that apply to online education in Higher Education and go over some of the allegations that have been cited in recent lawsuits and settlements related to accessibility.

9 The legal requirements for online course accessibility are not new. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990, this civil rights law prohibits discrimination solely on the basis of disability in employment, public services, and accommodations. Title III which, is also part of ADA regulation, covers public accommodations (including the Internet) and private entities that offer certain examinations and courses related to educational and occupational certifications.

10 The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (or the Rehab Act) was the first major legislative effort to secure equality for individuals with disabilities. Section 504 of the Rehab Act covers programs and services at colleges and universities. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998, outlines enforceable standards that can help us implement web accessibility. These standards include electronic and information technology good and services including websites and web based content. The Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights enforces Section 508.

11 How many of you have heard of a MOOC? A MOOC is a Massively Open Online Course. How many of you have heard of edx? edx ( is a platform for providing MOOCs. edx was developed by Harvard and MIT edx is a platform for providing Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The Department of Justice recently initiated a compliance review under the the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to determine whether individuals with disabilities have full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations offered by edx through its website, The compliance review found that and the edx platform were not fully accessible and in violation of Title III of the ADA.

12 The Department of Justice entered into a four year settlement agreement with edx to remedy alleged violations of the American with Disabilities Act. Among other things, the settlement requires edx to provide accurate captioning for the deaf, oral navigation signals for the blind, and programing changes so those with dexterity disabilities can navigate content without struggling with a hand operated mouse. The settlement also requires edx to significantly modify its website, platform, and mobile applications to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA. WCAG 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

13 Earlier this year, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and its Plaintiffs filed Federal lawsuits against both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), alleging that both universities violated Title III and Section 504 antidiscrimination laws by denying individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing with equal access to thousands of free online videos and audio files which includes courses, educational lectures, and topics of general interest.

14 In this image from a video of President Obama s 2009 visit to the MIT campus, President Obama said, go down on the solar cell but was transcribed as saying, got down on dollars ok.

15 Other recent lawsuits and settlements involving Higher Education center around issues with Learning Management Systems or online content that is not accessible to screen readers.

16 education/ Before we get into the details of Universal design, I wanted to walk you through 10 easy steps that were put together by our counterparts at the University of Arkansas. A link to their resource page that describes each step in detail is available on our resource page.

17 It is easy to make student who may require accommodation feel comfortable in your course. An access statement lets them know that they are included, and you are there to help them meet their needs. This is a sample statement that some instructors use at UMass Amherst. There are also examples from other universities on the University of Arkansas site. You can feel free to modify these statements to meet your needs and those of your students. Notice that this statement not only offers instructor assistance, but also asks students to request accommodations in a timely manor.

18 You want students to focus on your content, not how to get content. Try to avoid requiring students to drill down multiple times to reach content. Ideally, courses in departments or programs would also have consistent navigation from one course to the next.

19 This is just a sampling of the instructional tools available within Blackboard Learn. Choose tools to meet your instructional objectives, and evaluate tools for accessibility. For example, within Blackboard tests there is a question type that asks students to highlight an area on an image. On the surface this sounds like a great resource for history courses with maps questions. However, those with visual disabilities have no way to answer those questions.

20 Just like in parenting we want to model behavior, the same applies in teaching. Students in online courses may be used to discussions in social media as opposed to online courses and may need to be taught appropriate discussion formats, grammar and sentence structure.

21 Color can be both a barrier and a distraction. If using color, provide an alternate mode of conveying meaning such as patterns or shapes. In the first example the buttons are both a similar color and the same tone. In the better version, the green is a lighter tone, so even if the individual can t discern between green and brown, they will be able to see the tone change. In the final, best option, there is also a while outline around the hover button to indicate the change. In the graph, the stripped pattern on the pink columns will help those who cant see the difference between the pink and purple.

22 Text provided in online courses needs to be readable not only to sighted users, but also to screen readers. Text that is scanned is initially converted to an image by the scanning software. Optical character recognition can convert the image back to text. Since it is am automated algorithm, the conversion needs to be checked manually and corrected. A quick check of scanned documents is to highlight and copy the text. If you can paste the copied text, a screen reader can read it. Adobe Acrobat Pro, Scannable, and RoboBraille can all perform optical character recognition.

23 Regardless of the type of document that is being used, make sure that best practices for that document format are followed to maximize accessibility. Ms Word, MS PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat all have built in checkers to identify accessibility errors.

24 When a screen reader encounters an image it will read image: information in alt text. If there is no text, all the visually impaired user will know is that there is an image on the page, but nothing about its education value. Alt, or alternative text is available for most document formats and images added to Learning Management systems. Use short terms that describe the image and how it relates to the course. Alt text will also be helpful if the image does not load properly due to poor bandwidth or other technical issues.

25 The text that you use for alt text is going to depend on context of the image. This lotus flower will have different meanings in botany and Asian culture classes. It can be overwhelming for screen reader users to hear everything that is on the screen. If the flower is purely decorative, use double quotes so the screen reader knows to skip it. Keep in mind that wordles and word art are images, not text, so require alt text.

26 Just like Alt text for visual content, captions and transcripts are essential for audio content. We will talk later about options for automatic transcription.

27 As with images, when a screen reader encounters a link it will read link: link text. Users can also scan the document by jumping from one link to the next. With explicit, unique link text, screen reader users will know where the link will take them. Click here does not tell the user anything about the link destination, nor does etc. In my final example, an instructor wants to provide file format options for the homework assignment. This is a great idea, letting students who want to print a document choose PDF, while those wanting to complete the assignment digitally can download the word doc option. However, if the instructor does this for all assignments in the course adding the assignment title to the link text will be most useful.

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29 Heading styles help screen readers navigate easily through the pages by separating document sections. Instead of using colored, bolded, or italicized text, use the Strong and Emphasis styles. As an added bonus, using heading styles will make it very easy to create a table of contents for longer documents.

30 As with headings, using bullet and numbering styles rather than manually entering the a number followed by a period or parentheses, will indicate to a screen reader that the text is a list of items.

31 Avoid using tabs and hard returns for space formatting. Instead, use column styles.

32 To perform OCR and other advanced tasks you will need a full version of Adobe Acrobat. UMass Amherst faculty and staff can obtain a free version for University owned computers. Faculty, staff, and students can purchase the software for personal use at a fraction of the retail price.

33 Students differ in the ways that they learn the information that is presented to them. Some learners grasp information quicker or more efficiently through visual or auditory means rather than text. Creating content in different formats allows students to learn from the format that works best for them. Students can have options for submitting work, learning from materials, or receiving instructor feedback to submitted work. 33

34 RoboBraille has been mentioned a couple times already. That is because it is terrific, free resource. It can perform OCR, and also convert text to an audio MP3. This is am automated system. Sometimes it will pick up text in a footer, or read column structure incorrectly, but with a bit of spot checking, you can quickly and easily obtain audio for your course readings. 34

35 Students wishing to submit audio assignments can create recordings on Soundcloud or Audacity. Instructors can provide audio feedback to students in Turnitin s Grademark or through Blackboard s Grader app. 35

36 Both instructors and students can record video with YouTube s My Webcam. YouTube has automated captioning that can be manually checked for errors and edited. 36

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38 Before we begin, is PowerPoint really the best tool for online course content? Traditionally PowerPoints were used as a visual aid for face to face lectures. Some instructors use the same lecture slides as online course content, but without narration the slides loose their purpose and meaning. The recommendations discussed here pertain to use of PowerPoints used as standalone content.

39 Slide layouts are comparable to heading styles in Word documents. Using layouts, give structure to the slides that help screen readers navigate through the presentation.

40 Keep the slide layout and text as clean and easy to read as possible. Periods tell screen readers where to pause, even if it is not a complete sentence. 40

41 The slide notes space is ideal for scripting presentations. It gives learners the content that would be spoken in a live lecture.

42 For narrated lectures, YouTube is a good streaming solution. PowerPoints of Keynotes with embedded audio can be uploaded to YouTube where the audio can be automatically captioned. There are multiple screen capture tools for creating narrated lectures. At UMass Amherst we use Echo 360 and are currently investigating Cielo 24 as a captioning vendor.

43 At UMass Amherst CPE we use Blackboard Learn as our LMS, so these examples are from Blackboard but most will apply to any LMS. 43

44 Scheduling is important. Students can manage the course workload easier when deadlines are consistent. Use a course calendar and remember to include intermediary steps. For example, if you require and initial discussion post on Wednesday and a responsive post to peers on Sunday make sure to include both posts on the calendar. 44

45 Student tracking can help ensure student success and help you to identify at risk students who may need additional support. Track student progress in four key areas: access, activity, missed deadlines and grades. To help you track students in each of the four areas ask yourself: Did everyone login? (Course Access) When is the last time Student A did something? (Course activity) Who has missed a deadline? (Course deadlines) Is someone at risk due to low grades? (Grades) 45

46 Discussions usually play a big part in online courses. Most Learning Management Systems allow for subscriptions. In Blackboard the course can be designed to allow students to subscribe to discussion forums or discussion thread. When a student subscribes to a forum or thread the student receives a notification every time there is a new post to the forum or to a thread. Students choose whether or not to subscribe. 46

47 This slide is from Blackboard and shows where a student will click if they want to subscribe to a discussion forum. 47

48 Blackboard makes it easy to allow individuals or groups of students to have: More than one attempt to take an quiz, test or exam. different dates to take a test and/or extra time to complete timed quizzes, tests or exams. Many exceptions are useful for disability accommodations but can also assist the scheduling of busy online learners. 48

49 There are many challenges to Universal Design. Some of the challenges are: Some students will still require accommodations. Implementing Universal Design principles and creating accessible content take a significant amount of time. Instructors may not have the knowledge or skills required to create accessible content or feel that it is their responsibility. Question: is a truly universal design possible?

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