 So we are now reporting over to you Cheryl. A welcome thanks for joining us. My team is always really happy to talk about this particular topic so you're in the right place. So I'm going to talk about teaching an accessible online course and my name is Cheryl Bergstahler. My email address is SHERYLB at www.edu. And this presentation is designed particularly for faculty members that don't have a large extensive background in IT accessibility. Or for people that are working with faculty to help them make their courses accessible. Particularly with the pandemic I found that we need to keep the story kind of short and show them some simple ways that they can make products accessible. And then you can fill in the gaps with more technical expertise from our website or future webinars on document accessibility or web accessibility, video accessibility and so forth. The accessible technology services includes two units. The IT accessibility team. Cheryl manages that group that started back in 1984 was just merged with other things that I was doing in my group, very small and then it grew into its own unit. And all of the IT accessibility team efforts are funded by the University of Washington. And so our goal is to make sure that IT procured developed and used is accessible to our students, our faculty, our staff, and campus visitors. And we have another center as part of ATS, which is called the Duet Center, where Duets stands for Disabilities, Opportunities, Internet Working and Technology. And this project or program started in 1992, supported with federal, state, corporate, and private funds. So those grant funded projects allow us to do a lot more than we can do just with university funds and stretch out a little bit on our activities beyond the UW borders. We even have a program, a Duet Center in Japan, the University of Tokyo, and that started in 2007 and there's some other implementations, particularly in Asia. And then we also support the Center on Universal Design and Education, which started in 1999 with funding by the U.S. Department of Education. So I'll give you an overview of kind of how we approach things at the university, but also in our, in our Duet efforts, we have a student-centered approach. And what we do and our model is that working with stakeholders like you that contribute to the success of students with disabilities. And so we are, as the hub, success of people with disabilities in higher education and careers. In the case of the ITAT team, it's specifically related to technology, but Duet is more broadly focused. We take a look at who needs to be involved in order to level a playing field for people with disabilities. In this case, a university campus or a program, online learning, etc. So certainly the person with the disabilities involved, so we work with people with disabilities, their family members and allies, peers, near peers, community groups, special programs, service providers like the Disability Services Office to provide accommodations, K-12 teachers and counselors, post-secondary administrators, faculty and staff, employers of course have to be involved, technology vendors, funding sources, and federal agencies and so forth. So all of our projects in Duet are working with one or more of these stakeholder groups all contributing to the success of people with disabilities. Our two basic approaches are when we're working with students with disabilities, we're helping them develop self-determination skills and knowledge so that they can be successful in this not perfectly accessible world we're all living in. So that's our focus there. And then when we work with faculty or institutions, then we're talking about universal design. And I'm going to mention that as our framework when we look at online learning and other aspects of the university experience. So start with what we mean by having an inclusive course means that everybody who meets the requirements with or without accommodations is encouraged to participate. That means when courses are publicized even and they indicate where you can type, request accommodation, things like that. Everyone feels welcome. One of the most unwelcoming thing that students are experiencing in many online courses around the country is a syllabus in a PDF format that is not accessible to them. I'd say that's a very unwelcoming way to start the first day with your students and to treat that as an accommodation. And the third thing that everyone is fully engaged in accessible inclusive environments and activities. We can do all those things then we've kind of met our goal to make things inclusive. I'm going to give a really quick overview of the history and legal basis for accessibility related to online instruction, talk about accommodations to talk about universal design, some principles and examples and then resources, and then we'll have hopefully a little time for Q&A. So here's the one minute history lesson of the evolution of responses to human differences, including disabilities. And, you know, in some cultures still today but mostly many years ago, people with disabilities were eliminated or excluded or segregated in some way, so they weren't part of the mainstream population. In the middle of the last century there was a movement more toward working with the person with a disability to either cure them of their disability or rehabilitate them in some way, or provide an accommodation in an environment. Notice that all three things are focused on the individual with a disability. But now more current thinking, which is a social justice model or civil rights model. Then it doesn't make sense to wait until to only work with the student with a disability, if they have a right to be in our online classes, why aren't we making them more accessible to them when they show up, why should we be surprised by that. And so then the response to social justice like with other civil rights movements is in full inclusion. And universal design is just a practice or approach that helps us get to full inclusion for individual with disabilities. The legal basis that's also very short here. We can talk quite a bit about this but we won't. Some people will say well why aren't there any laws about making the courses accessible where there are, there are, there are two primary federal laws that require accessibility section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and its 2008 amendments. And you might think well, you know those laws of 1973 there was no internet online learning to speak of and well the, the thing about these laws they don't talk about specific access, their civil rights laws. They basically say that whatever we're offering at a post-secondary institution, we need to offer it to qualified students with disabilities and make employment accessible to people with disabilities as well. So those are the two federal laws but states, many states like our own have policies, we have policy 188 on IT accessibility, but they mostly reiterate these two laws, maybe with some specific guidelines and meeting the requirements. So I'm assuming that most people in this group are not directors of disability services or people that works with sympathy with individuals with disabilities. And if that's the case, most most faculty members get into that description is it's probably best to just think of ability on a continuum. You know we don't even know the difference between multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy, all these different conditions but we need to think about people that are in our class might have a wide variety of capabilities. And so if we go from an arrow on the left to not able all the way up to able. Everyone would fit on the line somewhere regarding their ability to do things. And so the ability to understand English or social norms, for instance, some are very able at that. And some, not so much because of a disability that relates to their social skills, could be because they were born in a different culture is not related to disability at all. And that's kind of the point here is it doesn't matter why people have different abilities, they just do as a normal part of a human condition. And if you go down the list the same as to ability to see out here or walk the ability to read prints, right with a pen or a pencil to communicate verbally to tune out distraction to learn and manage physical and mental health. And you might think of some disability categories that would be associated with some of these things like the ability to tune out distraction and attention deficits. But it's more important to just think about you have a wide variety of abilities in any classroom teaching. Another couple of things to think about when you're designing your course is most disabilities are invisible. And many faculty kind of feel they don't see anybody in their classes will be in person but also online. But if it doesn't look like they have a disability then they, they don't. And most disabilities are invisible like learning disabilities, attention deficits, autism spectrum, and so forth. And fewer than one third of students with disabilities report them to the disability services office. So even if you don't get a letter from a certain student saying that you need to provide accommodations. You may have a student with a disability that chooses not to disclose to that office, because they think maybe they don't need an accommodation, and maybe they don't, but maybe they could benefit from them. And they're not disclosing because they're worried that they'll be discriminated against they've had bad experiences with faculty members or teachers and K 12 that they didn't fully include them the things because they had a disability. And that's one of the reasons why someone would choose not to register, and it could be simply they know they don't need an accommodation a student might be missing one arm, but they can't see how they need an accommodation. Nobody's required to register with that office, unless they need an accommodation. So you might not hear about them or be aware of them. disability services is primarily offering accommodations to individuals. And this is after an inaccessibility issue is discovered so it's after the fact. In other words, not proactive. And we look at our campus and many campuses across the country. If we look at it, which we're focused on today is there are two things that are quite expensive in terms of staff time and even paying for outside services, as far as accessibility. And so they spent a lot of time on making their inaccessible documents accessible like the PDF issue I was mentioning earlier. And then finally reformatting PDF files. And then the second one is captioning videos. And we like to remind people that even if they put their videos up on YouTube we use to use some other platform that they're editing features that they could use to edit those computer captions before they use them in their class because computer generated captions may it were likely not accurate enough to be an appropriate accommodation for students death. For example, you need to get the punctuation in there and spelling rights and so forth. Plus if you have a, you're teaching chemistry or something you probably have some words in there that the computer didn't figure out quite right. So, those are accommodations, including extra time on tests and other things that a specific student needs and you'll find out about that on a letter from the disability services office. But sometimes it's the design of the product or environment that should be reconsidered and that's what we're talking about today how can we design the course proactively. So it's more accessible to students with disabilities, and I have a coffee coffee pot on the screen called the coffee pot for masochists I've always been fond of this image. It's out of the catalog of unfindable objects, which is out of print but you can find it and use bookstores. Anyway, it has a spout and handle on the same side. And I think if we took this product was nice design is very quite attractive I think, and gave it to people to serve coffee at a reception. I think you get some pushback on that and say well why are you making that so hard for me to use it. He might be creative and think well, you could take the lid off and pour the coffee out the side or you happen to be an engineer of some sort you might put some plastic tubing in and have maybe even more motor to kind of pump things up. Now that's what we're doing sometimes with students with disabilities and of course is we're directing barriers, because we didn't think enough about making them designed in a way that are that that is easy to use for those students with disabilities or some types of disabilities at least so we're trying to avoid that by having proactive design. And that's what we universal design comes in universal design has been defined as the design of products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. It's a very general definition, the center on universal design actually created it. It basically says that we'll just when we're creating anything that's a physical space or teaching opportunity or student service or it or whatever you're designing that you think of the broad range of people that might be taking your class or participating in another environment and thinking about them when you do the design and do your best and making things more accessible to those people that you're thinking of. So characteristics of universal design are that it's accessible. So technically it should be accessible to people with disabilities and we'll talk a little more about accessibility. And it's usable, which has to do with how you can perform functions in that software. So not just looking at some guidelines to make things accessible but looking at what are the most important things that person does and sometimes with the software package. So first step in choosing what part of the software package you'd like to use that is a barrier. And so it doesn't matter how accessible the other things are down the road. And then it's also inclusive. And so we tend to have products for the most part, whenever possible, that can be used by people with a wide variety of disabilities and other characteristics rather than create separate products for them. So these types of products for people with disabilities, it's often in the form of assistive technology and add on to existing technology. So I really like this, this quote here from Vietnamese Buddhist monk because I think he was thinking he was thinking of universal design and teaching. Let us if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce, you look for reasons it's not doing well, maybe the fertilizer or more water or less sun, and so forth. And so when you're designing a course and then you have a student in your course and it's facing some challenges rather than immediately think oh they're not trying hard enough they're not doing things a certain way. They don't have the technical skills that they need and so forth, at least pause and ask yourself if you might have designed the course a little differently so that it would work for that student without lowering the standards in the course. So as the more we build in universal design, then the fewer accommodations students should need. And I actually teach them online courses and that's definitely the same. I own their, it's kind of rare having a need for accommodations and I've had students in my classes that are who are blind or deaf have all sorts of mobility impairments learning disabilities attention deficit and so forth. And so we can reduce the number of accommodations. So the image on the left shows a large circle with accommodations in it as a part of universal design. Because I consider the accommodations as part of the design, but on the right, if you're really employing universal design to the max, then that the number of things in accommodation category will diminish a great deal. So that's what we're shooting for can probably get a bit you won't eliminate it totally but you can get them down to fewer. One perfect example of the universal design feature that has been fully embraced by our society and many others is, is curb cuts. This is an image on our front page of our newspaper here at the University of Washington our student newspaper called the daily. And it's a man in a wheelchair does ramp the curves get me off the street. And so there weren't ramp curves back there in 1970 and this person was just having to go up and down the streets. I'm sure there are many people at our university that thought this is never going to happen with all the hills at the University of Washington and Seattle in general, what has happened it has been embraced. And when you create a new sidewalk, it's not that difficult to put a curb cut in it, but going back and retrofitting all those old sidewalk sidewalks was quite a chore. And so we're kind of hoping something will happen, a paradigm shift within other applications, and to kind of make the point between 8088 compliance, as people call it sometimes, and universal design. So you have an entrance to a building here at the University of Washington, where you have a two step entrance to the main door, and then you have a ramp to the left, it looks pretty shallow and, and has handrails and probably is ADA compliant. But it's not fully universally designed, because people enter the different the building in different ways. On the right there's an image that shows it and similar entrance to building at the University of Washington. In this case, the entrance the primary entrance is really wide, and it's a ramp, but also again very shallow. And so if you were walking side by side with a person using a wheelchair or a walker in image number one you part ways to get in the building, where in image number you'd go in together. And there are stairs in this particular building so if you want to use stairs you can but the idea is that the primary entrance is the one that's most inclusive it's most accessible to everybody and doesn't segregate people. The basic idea with it is to build in accessibility features and then ensure the compatibility with assistive technology somebody might be using. So we minimize the assistive technology, the need for it by building in things like changing the color of your characters next to the background, you know, having access to the outputs and, and other things to make things more accessible. We just need to look no further than our smartphones to see about these accessibility features that used to be just things that things that they had an assistive technology for people with disabilities. And another point is if you design something to be universally designed including it usually benefits other people as well. And so if we just take a look at a simple one and captioning videos, often we think of that for students who are deaf. And so if you're unable to hear the audio then yes you need captions but many other people benefit, like those who are English language learners. Those in a noisy environment like the airport or a noise less one like the library or bedroom with the baby sleeping. And those who might have a slow internet connection and so one turn off the video. And those who need to find content quickly, so they can search search for those content and makes it possible to search for content of the captions. So, I think it's important for faculty then to basically consider the characteristics of students who might be in their courses. And then the assistive technologies there, they might be using some kind of faculty will say to me well I'm going to create a survey and I'm going to survey survey them on the first day of class and see what their needs are. The process for universal design, the first step of universal design is just imagine you're going to have a broad range of characteristics, and then I'm not saying you shouldn't survey the students but that that isn't the most important part. You should be prepared for a student with any type of disability. And it's probably not going to be 100%, but you can get a lot farther than if you haven't thought about it was all at all. So what I do when I'm designing an online classes I think about some of the students that I know and we in the do it program we have a lot of students with disabilities and then at the university as well. And so that's easy to do I know these four people. But if you even thought of these four people, and you designed your course accessible to them, then it's going to be accessible to a lot of students with disabilities, maybe not everyone will take you a long way toward a fully accessible class and inclusive class as well. And so the images I have here Anthony, who doesn't have full use of his hands, and it doesn't have to have a usable voice. So he uses technology that he can have an on screen keyboard and press the keys with his hand. And also he has speech output so that he can connect his device to a phone. He actually does phone support for a company that sells assistive technology, so he can buy phone support even though he can doesn't have a usable voice itself. And so that's pretty dramatic how technology has improved his life. And Jesse has multiple learning disabilities. So she uses dictation software, because she has hard time getting her thoughts down on paper even using a keyboard, but she also has a reading disability. And so it's difficult for her to read like her email and so forth. And so she uses speech output as well text to speech software so it reads the content to her. So keep in mind then the computer is reading content to her and then it's taking down a dictation. So she does quite well with that combination. And there's Adrian, he's deaf. And of course he needs captions or other text or images to be presented if there's anything audio. And then there's Nicole, who has a computer science degree now and she's totally blind. And for her, she needs speech output she needs the software available she can convert text to to Braille and print out on her Braille embosser and so forth so kind of think about those a little bit. And as you go down your journey you might want to learn more about the technology they use but that's just the introduction. One piece of good news is even though there are thousands, literally thousands of assistive technologies that people might be using. You don't need to know the details about that unless you're going to make a career of, you know, supporting assistive technology for people with disabilities. It's more important for you to have some basics about what the limitations are of that technology that somebody might be using. So this is just a simple high level, you know, just a couple examples. And so, looking at the assistive technology on the left hand side of the screen, and what that means in design of it is up here so the assistive technology may emulate the keyboard, but not the mouse. So someone with a visit them mobility impairment like Anthony, the technology he's using, you can do much guarantee will emulate all the functions that are on his keyboard, but not necessarily a mouse. And so what that means for web designers and software designers is that they need to make the product operate with the keyboard alone. And so things like just think of something you might use your mouse for to go and make a selection somewhere on the screen. So perhaps they a person can use the arrow keys to get to that spot. So it needs the designers that will build in these these types of features later just block people with disabilities out. The screen screen readers can read the content presented cannot read the content presented images. So we have features to provide alternative text, and that screen reader will pick up that text and read it to the person. So they are using a screen reader. And so this could be a student who's blind, for instance, I like to bring this up because probably in your learning management system here we use canvas, it will prompt you for alternative texts, but you are faculty you work with may not understand why. And that's why. So that would be an example to some faculty might think well if I have a student who's blind in my past then I'll go back and change all that. Well it's a much easier just to do it and you're putting images up on your pages in your learning management system. A system technology specifically screen readers can tab from link to link on a web page. You might wonder why that matters. Well if a person is using a screen reader perhaps because they're blind. They would like to see an overview of the web page many times, like those of us who have site would just look kind of scan the page and think oh no I don't want to go to these resources resources I better look somewhere else. So if you make the, the text on links. The same for each one might look orderly for you and so all the links they click here, click here, click here. That's exactly what the person in our screen reader is going to hear when they access that one page. And so what you're telling the student who's blind using the screen reader is, Oh, you have to read this whole page, and then you can kind of figure out which words are clustered around that, that link that hyperlink. So there are another feature of screen readers is that it can skip from heading to heading within the document itself, like the PDF document or the Word document or, or whatever. And so, and then why would you need that well if you're a screen reader user. Because you want to know how the paper is organized it might be a 25 page paper, and it might be good to read the headings and they should be hierarchical so you'll see heading one, heading to heading to heading three, heading three, heading to, and so you can see how the paper is organized. Otherwise, if you just take text and say you want to have a heading you just select the text to make it bold. The screen reader isn't going to see that as a heading. And so that's really important to another thing that this isn't hard to do doesn't even take more time to do it if you do it in the design process. And then we already talked about the technology not able to accurately describe audio. And so then it's important that you capture your video and transcribe audio. So, seems pretty simple. That's real, like I said really high level and there are many technical people on my staff here that can give you a lot more detail. But that's kind of the overview. So I'm going to get asked by people, well do I have to learn all these various technologies and so forth. Well it's fun it's really interesting technology you might want to learn to use a screen reader, but you may not be able to be proficient enough to really tell that your website is accessible using that, unless you invest some time in it. So you might think of well what, you know what are going to be limitations that I can actually see and like the for the, you know, whether your website can be used without a mouse just put your mouse aside and see if get to everything. And then you'll have a simulation of what it's like a person using a screen reader who happens to be blind. And so that's universal design principles and you can thank me very much I'm not going to go through all of them. But to cover all aspects of higher education I like to point to three sets, the definition of universal design we already talked about, and the original people that created that definition also developed seven principles of universal design that can be applied to anything a physical environment technology teaching anything that we're doing can can use those principles as guidelines. And there are three that were added quite a bit later by cast and organization. They came up with three universal design for learning principles, and they're particularly suited to the learning environment so particularly with online learning. They would be worth looking at. And I also like to include the principles that underpin the web content accessibility guidelines. There are four of them. Because sometimes what people do that only use one set and that they might be designing online learning, and all they do is UDL and not deal with accessibility. And as I mentioned earlier I consider accessibility part of a universal design. So learning all three sets can be a good way to start. We have short time today and you might be happy to know you don't really have to memorize all those. If you look at our website which I'll give you the URL for Universal Center for Universal Design and Education, you can find out what they are and see specific examples. But here's kind of a rule of thumb in a nutshell. If you did these three things, your course is going to be pretty accessible and inclusive and usable. Number one, provide multiple ways for participants to learn and to demonstrate what they have learned. So teaching a concept using a short video and then maybe having a handout or a website or something where they can also get that same content as a reinforcement, or you can do one or the other, if the content is basically the same. And then the second one is to provide multiple ways to engage. This can be helpful like in a course you're teaching online and preparing for students in the class by applying universal design. Communication systems and the way to engage some are more accessible than others. So one thing I do in my syllabus is I always say you can meet up one on one just make an appointment with me send me email at such and such. And then I say and we can meet with with zoom or the bulletin board system, part of the learning management system, or email, or anything else you choose. And so the idea is I give them the choice so I don't need to know whether zoom is not very accessible to somebody in my class, they get to decide that. And so, it also I don't have to use a technology that some students might be in comfortable with. There might be people that don't want to be on a zoom, a zoom call it might be because they're English language learners and they're a little embarrassed about their English skills, and would be comfortable doing email so that they can do some spell checking and so forth and so giving students control when possible is a good way to apply universal design without learning a lot of details about how accessible one product is. So the second one is multiple ways to engage. So that's the second one. If you take a look at the first and second one combined. Those are just basically the three principles of universal design for learning just stated a little differently. And then the third one is the one that gets into more of the general principles of universal design and the web content accessibility guidelines underpinned by universal design principles. So what it says besides those first two things that was universal design for learning. Ensure all technologies facilities services resources strategies are accessible just individuals with a wide variety of disability so you ensure that accessibility beyond some of these universal design principles and the other other two so. So the rest of the time just going to kind of scan through some basic practices. I developed a checklist with 20 tips. And the whole idea was I was hearing from so many faculty members I talked to they don't know where to get started. And they also got the idea that everything's really hard, because maybe the first thing they learned is how to how to redesign and inaccessible PDF and it's like I don't have time to do all this stuff. And so, so I decided to create a checklist and Tara Thompson, my staff he had 30 tips on how to design accessible websites I thought I'm going to beat him by having a fewer fewer on my list. Now, not really but it's good story. Now this is available online URL is on the screen here but you also these days I can set search for 20 tips as 20 as a number, just with a Google tour Google search. And often this handout comes up. Number one or at least one of the first items, because it's used by a lot of people and you can feel welcome to, to link to it as well as not that it's been developed and it's been edited over many years. And so it's not a perfect list and I can always think of more things to put on there and I do adjustments as people give me additional ideas. Nine tips are about the technology essentially how it's designed, how accessible it is. And then 11 for the instructional methods so that's more the pedagogy, like universal design for learning type things and good design practices. And the difference between that handout and what you see on the screen today is that there are links to resources for doing the things that I'm talking about like where to get started to look at how to make a PDF document accessible for instance to see you need you look at the, the online document to get those, those places to go to if you want to learn more about any of these particular things. We've already developed with a literature review reports from online instructors, we have a lot of fast building institutes and other programs where we hear from people, what they're doing what works, what doesn't, but also students. And one little side light is students with disabilities when we put them on a panel and have them talk about how accessible online learning is to them. The things that they bring up, often are things that any student would say and I'll point out a few things as I go through this list. There's not really high level technical details. And now you have to have a certain level of access to even get that kind of feedback. But a lot of the stuff as you see is not rocket science. And so the message is that you can do some accessibility things and inclusive things without a broad background in it accessibility. So when we're looking at web pages or documents or images or videos even here are a few things for layouts and organization. This is often presented presented as a problem for students with disabilities. Now having worked recently a lot recently with faculty members that are throwing everything that they do in person online because of the pandemic. You can look at those courses, and you'll see a great deal of inconsistency in the layouts and organization schemes. And I have a lot of forgiveness for these faculty members by the way. So maybe the first iteration, that's okay but then they just go back and see if they can decide what their format is going to be and be consistent with it throughout the course. It can be very helpful for students with some types of disabilities and sometimes when it affects executive functioning, and so forth, and it will benefit other students as well I think we would all agree. Use text form and don't put in a scan in PDF. It's just an image, because it can't be read directly by a screen reader. And then, with that text, also structure the headings I already talked about that using the heading structure that is in the, the package of using it could be a learning management system or word or other other package you can look and see what the accessibility features and see if there's something like that. And lists as well. You know you might, I think most people use the style function within word to create the list but I still weren't into documents so that's not the case and they just put a, you know manually put in a dot in front of the items. Then what happens if someone reads it. With a screen reader, it doesn't distinguish those items as lists. And so just may come across as just a flow of ideas and the list structure, as we know if we do have site benefits us help us organize our thoughts. And so that's why you need to do that as well. And the third is descriptive wording for hyperlinks also for screen reader users. So if you guys are interested in doing that, I like to keep it really short and specific doesn't be really long one. And there are actually guidelines you can search around the internet and find some guidelines for that as well. I've already said I would avoid using PDFs, unless you want to invest some time. That's okay. So the insist on having a PDF we're working with the center now for the last couple years and it was an inaccessible PDF. He didn't really want to learn how to make it accessible he just wanted to use it that way. So they send these out using email, and then put them on the website and so so his solution was just to have an accessible word document but also have the PDF. Maybe not the best solution but it's a good one. If you look at the do it website. We have a lot of this handouts that people can usually print and pass out in their own sessions, not so much now. But I like that PDF for that because it's easier. It looks good when it's printed. But then we have an HTML version, which is easier to make accessible, and it's more accessible in the grand scale. We have an HTML copy as well. We just have two versions. But the thing that's unique about our program, maybe not totally unique but there are a lot of programs that do it that I run into anyway, is the one that's the default one is the HTML version. And so you have to click on the PDF link to get a PDF copy. Most of the websites I see they do it the other way around and say well here's this nice beautiful PDF if you want an accessible form click here. So I really encourage people to have the most accessible thing that they have featured, kind of like that rant going into that building that I mentioned. So that's pretty important with the primary content, but all content is good. Some faculty will say well what about all these things I'm linking to their PDFs, and they look a little closer and realize that they're their images because they can kind of kind of select the text and it's just a one big image. And what I tell them if they're just getting started is, is, well first of all search around the internet you might be able to find an accessible version or your librarian might help you do that. And so that's a good thing to do. But you also might have to just wait and that will be considered an accommodation but you're at least aware of it, and you're at least not adding more inaccessible PDFs to the world. And include text descriptions of content and images already talked about that. That's another one you can find some good, good guidelines out on the internet and there's a link to one or two in that document itself with 20 tips. And there are also, you know, really specific guidelines on particularly large complicated graphs like in science areas and so forth, and large complicated, complicated tables. One particular guideline is to just keep those images and the table as simple as you can structure. And so you might divide that table into several parts and make it more linearized so there aren't so many areas and sub areas and sub areas. So, but those those long, those, those complicated images that do take some, some work the simpler ones. I like to tell people just use your own common sense because you know the content yourself, and just make it descriptive. You don't have to tell about everything you might have noticed in that when the red coffee pot was on the screen. I just kind of slipped in that they handle the spout on the same side. The reason I did that is I'm not assuming that everyone can see the screen. Could be because of a disability might be that you don't want to have the screen on because you have a slow internet connection who knows who knows, but I just assume that there might be people watching this that are, not accessing the image. One way to think about that is imagine somebody's calling in. So how are you going to describe that without a really great deal of detail, so they understand what the point you're trying to. And so with the coffee pot even I really like the red color and other qualities of it, I don't bother to describe all that but I do give them the distinguishing characteristics that make it an interesting example. So web pages documents images and videos page two or two large bold sans serif fonts unquittered pages plain backgrounds I'm demonstrating that today. You might make exceptions on that but for people with visual impairments and some learning disabilities, it can be very difficult to read if there's a busy background. So, maybe make your PowerPoints not quite as pretty as you'd like to to benefit many people. Use high contrast color combinations and avoid problematic ones for those who are colorblind. That's something you could easily explore and there's a link on the 20 tips handout. I'm told that green and red are particularly difficult for many people with with colorblindness, but, but my practice is to always make sure that the color under seeing the color is just an option. And so you might have a couple buttons on the screen and you might want people to choose one if they're all that they're all triangular and shape. Then you say, you say one will choose the red one for this one blue one for that. Then a person who's code by not may not be able to follow what you want them to do. So if you each want a different shape and a different color, then you can say, you know, she's the blue triangle or the red circle or what and then you don't. Again, you don't have to know whether it's a problem for anybody. You've just anticipated that it might be sometime. So videos are captains and audio description is good to that's not done as often, but it's it's gives a little extra audio where the reader read something aloud like maybe the title of your video or the credits at the end. I encourage people creating their own videos to try to speak all the contents. So a person a student, for instance, can get all the content by listening to what you're saying. And including the credits at the end, the acknowledgement you might have something like our videos is for more information on this topic, consult with just speak that. And so if you don't have the audio extra audio description in there at least a student would be able to hear that. As much as we all love to have all kinds of technology tools the greatest this and that. I recommend that you avoid using a large number of them and stick to the learning management system tools. For one thing the students will get used to those tools and be better at using them. And then also when you're using things away from the LMS. Make sure that they're accessible. Like for instance, can you use them without the keyboard alone, and that might take some consultant consulting to do that. But it's good to check these last there are actually some lists out on the internet where you can just post a message of the discussion list and say hey, how do you check the accessibility of whatever you're thinking about using. What happened ATH and all cats is a an organization that has a discussion list and it's highly technical people regarding accessibility. And so you, we often see messages out there for people ask that question. Address a wide range of text skills and pointing to resources when I teach online I assume that there might be some of my class who's never used Blackboard or Canvas or whatever I'm teaching the course in. Although there are a lot of user documents that can help them do that but I also know there are tons of documents and videos. And so what I do is say, at the beginning of the course if you haven't used this learning management system. I suggest that you start with these three resources and point them to them, because you will know which ones are going to be needed, especially the first couple weeks of the class. I'm sure that the contents presented in different ways we talked about that as the DL multiple ways to communicate and collaborate another UDL principle and multiple ways to demonstrate your learning. So giving giving students choices, or if not choices at least different ways. So all of your tests are not exactly the same format and so forth. So some students that aren't so good at one way to show they've learned something might be better at others. Be sure to address a range of language skills, just using this plain English. One of the biggest complaints I get from students with disabilities, but I think of the other students as well, is faculty members that don't spell out or define acronyms and jargon. Even jargon that you might consider that everybody knows, like what I always do, I always use the expression low hanging fruit a lot, particularly when it comes to accessible design. And the first time I use it in the class where I might be teaching, I always define it and I just build it in I just say, if you haven't heard that expression before what I mean by low hanging fruit is whatever. The instructions and expectations are clear. I like to put all my instructions among assignments and great detail in the syllabus, because then you're allowing a student student to plan their time. So they're going to need extra time on something they can do it early on rather than later they can get started right on day one and some of those things. Make sure examples and assignments are relevant to diverse audience, think up some clever different ways of saying things, providing outlines or notes or other scaffolding tools. So that students maybe that are a little weak on study skills might be able to learn something from you in the early days of the class, and I like the word scaffolding because that implies that the scaffolding is going to come down. So it's just a crash to get started. Make sure there are adequate opportunities to practice. In some cases, I used to teach mathematics but not online actually but you know some students just need a lot more practice and so you can easily build in extra practice by getting an assignment for the middle class and then saying, if you feel that you need extra practice with this. Here's, here's another, you make that an optional activity and you might think well students are going to make that choice somewhere. And that gives them an opportunity to own it to own that they're going to learn that concept. Yeah, we have one more feedback on parts of the assignments and corrective opportunities if a big project if you can give feedback like first have a student say what they're thinking about doing for their project, maybe even check in midstream to see how they're doing and give them further feedback. So, now I have two other things I want to mention and I'm not going to go above 20 because I'm going to lose the competition material. One thing I like to mention is using accessibility checkers in Microsoft Word PowerPoint in the learning management system and other products you might be using. Along with the accessibility checkers often there are templates like PowerPoint and the advantage of using an existing template and maybe modifying it somewhat, but is that those templates tend to be designed in an accessible way and they will be pointing you toward accessible practices, rather than just create a lot of text box boxes and create your own design. And then when you're choosing it tools to use get some help from a consultant on whether they're accessible accessible. But you can do a few things short things like checking for the accessibility page on the website of the product. If they don't have an accessibility page. They don't have a real strong possibility they haven't thought about accessibility at all. Otherwise they put their page and break about it. And there's the, the voluntary product accessibility template used by the federal government and software and hardware vendors need to fill it out. You can look that up and see what they say keep in mind it might be their marketing people that created the VPAT and also the accessibility page on the website so it's not a perfect thing. And then the question on the app and discussion list I mentioned and there are some others as well and see if you can operate the technology with the keyboard along. So there's just a few ways to get started. So anyway, we're kind of at the close of the end here on our do it website I mentioned do it early on, we actually have an extensive novelties, because there's some specific things that you might find you have to find in these guidelines for getting started, or even on more comprehensive websites. So, for example, stem content, I haven't really talked about that some of this, everything applies to stem content we know there are a lot of symbols and things that make me make it more difficult. And so in our knowledge base we have a lot of q&a's. And so here's just a couple of them. Are there guidelines for creating accessible math, yes. And how can I create math and science documents that are accessible to students with visual impairments. How do I create online math content that is accessible to students who have line. And what are some techniques for creating braille math materials. And so you can really get into the technical details. I want you to make the basic considerations that I'm talking about today so this is just the beginning. But if you're training faculty, I would encourage you to use the 20 tips. And also to edit them for yourself and you may want to exchange some of the ideas with some others that you would, you would choose for your group. And you'll notice at the end of that handout that it says you have permission to even edit the document as long as you give credit to the source which was do it in that case. It's universal design. It values diversity equity and inclusion. So it can be used for part of the framework for your GI efforts. Those initiatives on all of our campuses these days to make things more inclusive of multiple groups. It promotes best practices does not lower standards. It's proactive and can be implemented incrementally benefits everybody and minimizes the need for accommodations. So that's, that's kind of the summary and the real super short summary is, this is all just good teaching items at middle school and high school teacher early on hot math. Later some computer science but a lot of these things some of the practice you learn and teaching development classes, but not all of our faculty have had those classes but these are just simply good practices and teaching. And I think of capturing that way it's a good teaching practice, but it also is a good, it's a necessary combination in some cases. Resources I mentioned, you know, my email address in the beginning but I have that up here as well. Cheryl be at UW.edu, that's Cheryl Vanessa, the Center for universal design and education at UW.edu slash do it slash CD, but you can just search for the center on universal design education and you'll find it. That's another one access DL actually all one word. That's a website on specifically with the 20 tips but also many more resources not just our own me the other resources that you can use to go down your journey journey and accessible it. And that's at UW.edu slash do it and then slash access DL. And so, then there's accessible technology that's the UW group that is managed by taro and his team keeps this website up to date. And we've got edu slash accessibility, and we're proud to say it's actually a link off the homepage of the University of Washington. So that's very cool it's the bottom of the page, accessibility is the link. Oh, hot off the press, a new book that was creative with a lot of input from the do it projects we've had creating inclusive learning opportunities and higher education, a universal design toolkit. You can get a 20% discount with code I N L E H E. Anyway, if you go to the center on universal design and education, you'll find that listed there. So, gave me do we have any questions. Yeah, we have a question that was posted in chat. Sarah asks, do you have advice for when there are conflicting access needs between students or between student and instructor. Can you give me an example. Let's Sarah are you still looks like she's still her on the call do you have an example that you can share with us. Yep. Okay. So, okay, so like in my class, I can't really use a computer mouse or keyboard, and I needed to caption videos for a student who doesn't hear. And I ended up myself. So there was like a clear access conflict there. And it was a situation which I had to do something within 24 hours and there was. So there wasn't an option for, you know, like getting help. So if you created them, did the captioning before the course started or the videos being created as the courses going on. So actually, so this is bigger. This is a bigger structural issue in that situation where like, I wasn't told until like, three days before the course that this there was a student who needed this accommodation. So it's a bigger structural issue. I'm thinking more so when you have the issue of like, if you had a blind student and a deaf student. So I'm thinking about like in rate the way you're delivering content and the way you're choosing to do things right if to be more visual versus more. Yeah, often I think that first example might be requesting an accommodation seems like a reasonable accommodation for you at your institution that didn't help me at the moment I know. But if you apply universal designs one way I like the reason I like that model is because if you follow the practices, you don't run into conflicts as much. And then sometimes you have to compromise. I think of an onsite example when a student is using a silent interpreter, and another student has an attention deficit that can be really disruptive to the student who has an attention deficit. And I would do the same thing online, but I would work it out between the two people and myself in that case, and see how we can make it happen. So, providing options often helps. I have an assignment in a class I'm teaching universal design where I have people go out to the internet, find an image of a physical space that appears to have a universal design feature that's not labeled as such. And take it, attach it to a message in the discussion board, and then explain to the group why you consider that to be a universal design feature. But right into the assignment, I say, alternatively, you can describe a physical space you have had experience in where some feature of that site physical space you would count as universal design, then, and explain that to the group. And also the people that use images then they have to describe those images. So a person can respond, but respond who might be blind anyway that the assignment, you think of a very visual thing, and it will be hard to make it accessible it's not really that hard if you give people options. Now I've had quite a number of people use the describe physical environment you've been in. And to my knowledge they're not blind. And so that's a plus to I think the universal design, but anybody can do it. You can decide. You don't have to tell anybody why. Okay, that is all of the questions that we have in the chat. So we're at the end of our time period to I will stay on and some people on my staff was for a little while here. And so if you have a question, maybe something was beyond the scope of this talk. We can keep chatting here but thanks for coming and you can leave now if you want or hang out with us for a few minutes.