how to make your online course more accessible

How to Make Your Online Course More

Accessible

Sandra A. RogersUniversity of South Alabama

“No otherwise qualified individual with a disability …shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…”

ADA Compliance

Describe images and hyperlinks. Use San Serif fonts for online

text. Check PDFs for accessibility. Caption audio and video.

Basic Guidelines

Simplify information by providing the specific name of the Website.  Good ex. Spring Hill College Online

Bad ex. https://secure.ecollege.com/shc/index.learn?action=welcome

Accessible Hyperlinks

Add Link to eCollege

Add alternati

vetext here

PowerPoint 2010: Right click image > Select Format Picture > Select Alt Text. Write explicit description.

Accessible Images

eCollege: Insert an Image Screen

Add Description to Images

Add alternativ

e text here.

eCollege provides the following San Serif fonts: Arial, Comic Sans, MS Sans Serif, Segoe UI, Tahoma, & Verdana.

Use San Serif Fonts

eCollege offers these serif fonts in the Rich Text Editor that should be avoided: Courier New, Georgia, Garamond, & Times New Roman

Avoid Using Serif Fonts Online

MS Word 2010 & 2013 have accessibility checkers that will highlight any issues your document has. Select File > Info> Check for Issues > Check Accessibility. Then click on the various alerts within the document to repair the issues accordingly before saving as a PDF.

MS Accessibility Checker

Are your PDFs readable? Conduct a word search within the Find box of the PDF for a word you see in the document. If you receive the message, “No matches were found,” then the document is a scanned image, which cannot be read by persons who use assistive technology. Repair it!

Don’t Use Scanned PDFs

Use Adobe Acrobat X (or XI)File>Action Wizard>Create Accessible PDFs> Action Step #5 is the Accessibility Checker

Repair Scanned PDFs

Use YouTube or other free

captioning services. If you don’t have your media

captioned, at the very least, provide a script.

Provide closed-captioning, so users can regulate the captioning.

Caption All Media

Contact Sandra Rogers, Instructional

Designer BL 113 srogers@shc.edu 251-380-4480

Questions?

2011 Captioning key: Guidelines and preferred techniques. (2011). The Described and Captioned Media Program. Retrieved from http://www.dcmp.org/captioningkey/captioning-key.pdf

Best practices for captioning. (2011). KnowledgeBase. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Retrieved from http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=11956

References

Evans, L., & Schmidt, D. E. Power points for all learners: Making accessible PowerPoint presentations. Chico: California State University.

Freed, G., & Rothberg, M. (2006). Accessible digital media guidelines. National Center for Accessible Media. Retrieved from http://ncam.wgbh.org/invent_build/web_multimedia/accessible-digital-media-guide/

Sammons, M. C. (2007). The Longman guide to style and writing on the Internet. NY: Pearson.

Technology and Information Accessibility Standards (Section 508). (2000). Access Board. Retrieved from http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm

Web Accessibility in Mind. (2013). Center for Persons with Disabilities. Logan: Utah State University. Retrieved from http://webaim.org/Web content accessibility guidelines 2.0. (2008). W3C. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/