 Hi everyone, my name is Aiden Johnston and I'm a Digital Learning Systems Developer at Glasgow Caledonian University. I'd like to talk to you about putting the access into accessible teaching materials at Glasgow Caledonian University. Like all institutions in reaction to the Covid pandemic, we pivoted to online learning literally overnight and VLE became the main tool to deliver the bulk of the learning teaching along with webinar tools to replicate seminars and lectures. And obviously along with that came the use of screencast for delivering many PowerPoint tutorials. So video became a real preferred direct replacement for these timetabled lectures and tutorials as well. Many of the tools that we utilise partially met accessibility legislation. At GCU we use Blackboard Collaborate Ultra as it's integrated with our VLE. But it's not being without issue as it does not provide automated captioning during or after a webinar has taken place. So that was the first of our challenges and the second emerging issue we uncovered was the issue of the general accessibility of all the learning materials that were now beginning to be deposited in our VLE. So at GCU we've been reviewing accessibility long before Covid began. We've been scanning the horizon for software solutions and tools that would be a good fit to complement our existing learning and teaching systems. But not only that, tools that are insured that are easy to use and which also bring additional benefits to our students and staff users. And we needed to give careful consideration that these tools would also fit into existing academic workflows in terms of content creation and delivery. But more importantly that these tools would actually integrate with our existing tool sets that we have. So two tools were identified and rolled out and promoted to staff to support them in the provision of accessible teaching materials. They are Blackboard Ally and Plan E-Stream along with Microsoft Azure Automated Speech to Text Capsule Service. So we look at the first one which is Blackboard Ally and we were ahead of the curve in some respects because we rolled out Ally just before the pandemic began. And Blackboard Ally is an accessibility toolkit that's deeply integrated with our VLE GCU Learn which utilizes Blackboard Ultra. And Ally is extremely valuable in helping our staff to meet the challenges around accessibility in three key ways. The first way is it automatically checks anything that has been uploaded to the VLE and in terms of it meeting the WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards. It then scans and assesses and gauges accessibility of those uploaded resources and delivers useful guidance to assist academic staff and instructors to improve the accessibility of their content. But thirdly and most importantly it also provides students with a vast range of accessible alternative formats to the original files that have been provided by the instructor. So going back to how it gauges accessibility, it does that in using a scale which is shown at the bottom of the screen starting from red and low, medium and amber. And then line green for high and then dark green for perfect 100% in terms of meeting accessibility. So what I'm going to do is guide you through now here how it actually works within our VLE. So here are some materials that have been uploaded to sample module. And we can see the score has been provided and the staff only see this gauge, the Ally gauge. And that is prompting them or giving them a call to action that they need to do something to improve. And in this case we have a PowerPoint that has only been scored at 52%. And it's telling us on the right hand side what this means and why it's been given a score, an amber score. But it's also helpfully guiding the academic to making changes to improve that score and make it more accessible. So they can simply go and make the adjustments based upon the advice given and then re-upload it. And in this case the second example we can see here is a journal article which has a score of 99% as a PDF file. And in this case the colour contrast is not as good as it could be but 99% is quite high. But essentially it's educating the instructor on what this means and they can make a judgement call there and then if they wish to make adjustments to that. But as it's in green no action is required. And the next example is an image that's been uploaded without an alt tag or image description. So it's got a score of 8%. And it does explain to the academic why the score is low again, what image descriptions are and why they actually matter and how they help a user who has a visual impairment. And it also then guides them how to write a good description. So it's been helpful. It's actually given meaningful examples that illustrate how to remedy the problem. And in this case you can then go back into Ally and actually write an image description and add that immediately without having to actually go back into the module itself. You update it in real time and then reanalyzes that and the score goes up to 83%. So it's automatically helping the instructors to make changes on the fly. Now that's the benefits to the academic staff. But what benefits does it have for students? So we can see the alternative formats icon and this allows students to download any of the resources presented in the module into these different formats making it very convenient indeed for students to access their learning materials in alternative accessible formats that are of their own choosing. And in this case type PDF, HTML, EPUB, electronic braille or audio. And it really comes down to what students actually prefer. So it benefits our staff and their student users. So one year on from the rollout of Ally at GCU we've undertaken some analysis of this and we've discovered that obviously there has been a massive increase in the amount of content deposited in our VLE which is not a surprise. But there's also been an increase in overall accessibility of new and existing content which is really encouraging and we are putting that down to the fact that we have made Ally available to staff so that they are actively looking at the feedback they've been given when they upload resources by Ally and acting upon that advice and making those changes. So we also covered the type of formats that are most common to the VLE and not surprising like their PDFs, documents or PowerPoint presentations. But this is important for us as it helps provide clear areas for focus in relation to CPD for our academic staff in the area of digital accessibility going forward. So it's actually helped us at GCU and informed our CPD planning for the future. And of the modules that we looked at in March the Ally score the lowest was 67.1 and the highest was 97% which positively rates them as green or dark green on accessibility rating which is very encouraging. But there's more work to be done there. So that's the first tool looking at how we help staff with learning resources. The second data I mentioned is that of video and captioning and automated captioning. As I said there's more and more tutorials and lectures moved online last year. At GCU we started working with Blubber Collaborate because we had it available but last year we moved to using Microsoft Teams as an alternative webinar platform. But we had to make sure that the university was compliant with accessibility legislation which is shown on the table on screen. And in this case these artefacts are considered recorded video with audio and to meet the legislation they need to have captions of what's actually being said. And in this case we did not actually have anything available. And we had to then start looking and find a solution that was going to be not only scalable but also easy to use for academic staff that fits with existing workflows. So I'm pleased to say that when you're on now we do have a recommended cost effective solution for providing captions and transcripts if they're required. But it's also now a requirement for all staff to provide these in line with the guidance shown on the table in the previous slide. And at GCU we have PlanetEstream which is a multimedia streaming media server we introduced last year. And it has the ability to integrate with various third party automated captioning services. And one of those is Microsoft Azure's speech to text service. And that is the one that we actually looked at going forward because it was easy to integrate because we were a Microsoft institution. But it also is extremely cost effective as a solution going forward for the automated captioning process of a lot of video and audio items that we did anticipate. So the next step was to run a pile of staff using the GCU integration. We did this in January to April early this year. And we identified as shown on screen the first and foremost it generates speech to text transcriptions and subtitles for recorded items. But it also gives users the ability to easily edit those captions all within a web based environment and all requiring no real training or skill for doing that. And that was very beneficial because it's an integrated part of the stream. It also generated SRT caption files which can be used with third party systems such as my Google's YouTube and other multimedia platforms. So it is using standards based technology. As I said, generally quick and straightforward to use for all our staff members. But most importantly it integrates with our existing Microsoft Azure architecture. And cost effectively it's providing one hour's worth of audio to text for 75 pence per hour which is extremely, extremely cost effective. So in terms of the workflow, as I said, that's an important part of procuring and identifying a solution going forward. And I'm pleased to say that because Planet E-Stream easily integrates with our BLE, this workflow for automated transcriptioning of audio and video materials that integrates with the BLE was enabled very easily. And the Planet E-Stream web based subtitle editor, as I said, offered a quick and easy way to check in my transcription files for enhanced accuracy. And the workflow shown on screen is quite simple. There's not that many clicks for staff to actually get their audio and video materials, their lectures, their tutorials, whatever it may be, videos into the Planet E-Stream system but also then straight into the BLE and hopefully in a quick and efficient manner that saves them time. So what we're going to show you on screen very quickly is our BLE and again this is how we add resources, video and audio resources that need to be transcribed. We simply build the content from the menu items normal, we upload it. We're then taken via special GCB button in the BLE straight into the subtitle area where they can submit it to the Microsoft Azure Q quickly and easily. Once it's returned, they simply click on the subtitle editor. It's all loaded in the same web screen and from here staff can then review the learning material that's being transcribed and they can go through it and they can see very clearly on the right hand side the subtitles, they can adjust them, they can adjust the colour, the font size, they're in complete control of all of the subtitles that they then want to present back to the students when they access that learning material through the BLE. So the pilot uncovered a lot of interesting feedback which has helped us going forward. The first being the processing speed of the video and audio that's been captioned and we've been working with the product vendor to bring that queuing time down even further and we'll continue to work with them to make that as quick and streamlined as possible. We've also looked at accuracy and again because Microsoft Azure is a cloud based AI engine it's getting better all the time. Microsoft use it across a variety of their services. Cortana and Microsoft Teams is one example and the more users it has the more accurate it is becoming. So when people ask how accurate is it, we say it's hard to pinpoint due to factors such as accents and dialect, the audio quality, multiple speakers. But what we are uncovering through feedback is the quality and the accuracy and the quality is becoming more and more accurate as time goes on. In terms of the ability to create transcripts, Plan eStream also has the ability using the SRT file for staff to take that resource, that transcript resource and turn it into a transcript as well. And the last piece of feedback we've received is the actual uploading of these video and audio resources and this is something that we're actually unable to do anything about as people are working at home because we all live varying broadband speeds but as time goes on and we do return to campus we've assured staff that this will be much quicker when we do return to using the universities and very fast Ethernet network. So in terms of post pilot rollout and obviously CPD training for staff on all these resources they fall under the umbrella of GC Go Digital which was launched last summer to help staff to prepare for academic year 2021 which was predominantly online. So we have a SharePoint site which hosts all of the recordings of the webinars we run on all these tools. We do have video Camtasia creative resources which go through exactly how to use these new tools and resources but we also have a pilot as well which we use comprehensively and we do introduce to our staff users at these webinars and training events and we do encourage staff to ask the questions but this also then becomes a very comprehensive resource bank and a very useful FAQ as well. So in summary both these tools are definitely helping to improve learning experience for all students and not just those with additional accessibility requirements. The tools also go a long way to helping our staff not only the legislative requirements but also understand why digital materials need to be accessible in order to provide inclusive learning experience for all of our learners. As I said GCU is now able to provide staff with a captioning solution to show that video content is accessible to all our learners and staff are now expected to have learned how to use Planet E-Stream for captioned recorded videos by the end of trimester B in the current academic year. And we've also created and updated our policy and guidance on accessibility compliance so the staff are fully aware of all of the expectations as we go into the new academic year. Thank you.